Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations cattails work

I was wondering if perch would wrap there eggs around cattails. I have 30 adult size (6-13")perch u think one would be a female. Might call local fish place to see if I can pick up a few females to make sure. I also got 30 3" perch also. My pond was lmb heavy but I fished there #'s down. I got 4 walleye and 85 Redears and 300 bg 2cc if anyone was wondering what I have. Only about.5 acre pond and about 10' avg depth.

Yellow perch should place some of their eggs among the cattail beds. It would be a good idea to go somewhere and cut off a twiggy tree branch or cut a small (3/4"dia trunk) tree and lay the top part in the pond with the butt end on shore. YP will likely drape eggs on or around it if they are present. If you added 30 3"-6" YP into a 0.5ac pond with even 3-6 LMB 8"-14" long expect those smaller YP to be bass food in a short time. A 10" LMbass will easily eat a 5" YP. I had that happen numerous times. Stocking smaller YP with adult LMB won't work 95% of the time unless the YP are 8"+ and better if they are 9". You will struggle to get any YP recruitment with any LMB in the pond. YP present for the entire year will have to be add stock.

Small YP can survive with LMB in a very weedy pond, but then how would you fish that pond?

Weird u say that, I put in 12 3" perch a little over a year ago to see if they would make it. I thought with all u told me in the past they would be candy for the bass, but thought I would try anyways. Then this past summer my wife went out and caught one and he was about 5" and I caught like 4 more so I thought they would make it. This past year I went out and bought some more to stock. The pond edges are about sixty percent cattails. I take out every bass I catch for most part, I have hard time taking the bigger ones out 14" or bigger(even though I no I should)!

The pond having lots of cattails at 60% coverage does provide lots of good hiding places for the perch and I would expect some to survive. Plus since you are removing a big percentage of the bass this also helps in small perch survival. You are doing the correct things to get YP to survive in a pond with LMbass. The ones that I know who are getting YP to survive in small ponds with LMB are removing every bass caught. It will be interesting to hear if the perch that hatch in the pond can survive to be adults. Your cattail infestation helps a lot for survival of small fish.