OK so I spent the 3-day weekend at the farm and noticed that a lot has changed at my pond. The fatheads are much sparser now but the pond is jumping with activity! I saw a MONSTER smallmouth on Saturday slowly cruising along near my gravel bed and I realized it was probably guarding fry. There were small black fish that were pretty quick all over the shallows and along the shoreline in deeper water, it took me till Monday to finally catch one in a small aquarium net and I am 99% sure it is was a smallmouth fry. This is the first fry we have ever seen as last years spawn must have been a bust.

After fishing a bit on Friday and Saturday with only a few bites and no landed fish (I was using a texas rigged craw with a 2/0 hook) I decided to change my approach on Monday morning, I rigged up a keitech sexy impact in silver flash (a 4" minnow imitating lure) on a Gamakatsu #4 drop shot hook rigged as a drop shot. The smaller hook was vital. I lost two 2lb+ smallmouth who spit the little hook out on jumps. I caught over 25 other fish around the christmas tree I sunk, numerous RES, at least a dozen yellow perch, and what I really hope is not a monster bluegill. I caught two other fish I thought were bluegill because they did not have red ears, they went in the frying pan, I know I should have eaten the monster one but I really wanted to believe it was a momma RES so I released it. It is clear that my Yellow Perch pulled off a spawn because I was catching 9-11" perch and 5-7" perch. I am pretty sure my RES also pulled off a spawn last year. I did not bring a ruler with me (a mistake I will not make again) and I was having too much fun catching fish to start taking pictures until the end but I took a few (I wear a size 11 shoe):

Please tell me this is a RES and not a bluegill, it was a monster! Fat as a pig!:



Pretty sure this is a stocker Yellow Perch:



Smaller Yellow Perch that I assume was from last year's spawn:



Typical smaller RES, pretty sure this was spawned last year:




My wife and daughter caught numerous crayfish which were under every patch of shallow leaves they turned over. Some were 5-6" long! Lots of evidence that they had molted recently, saw some enormous empty shells in 2-3' of water. They also caught a lot of grass shrimp with their aquarium net.

So please tell me if that big fish is a RES or a Bluegill. If bluegill are in the pond then I will keep trying to remove them and hope my larger smallmouth can keep them in check.

Should I start removing yellow perch? I want the smaller ones to be forage for my smallies but I don't want them to eat too much of the other forage fish.

There was not much activity when the feeder went off. I know the decline of the fatheads is probably the main reason for this but I still expected the GSH and Perch to feed. Maybe it was still too cold (the top 3-4' felt like low 70s and below that was much colder, only had the shallow aerator running and will turn on the deep one in early June). None of the fish I stocked were "feed trained" but I thought the GSH and YP would adapt, am I wrong? Am I wasting time and money feeding without feed trained fish?