Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Redear id.

Do juvenile redear have red markings?

Stocked hbg and res fingerlings in early spring.
Have yet to catch anything with red markings.

Yes but they are sometimes kind of hard to see till the fish get to about 3". Sometimes you can tell at 2", sometimes not. I caught a couple of 1" RES in traps this last week (at least they came out of a forage pond with supposedly only RES as the sunfish variety) and I would not be able to tell them from a BG.

Male n female both have the red?

Red or orange.

Generally speaking dominant looking larger males tend to have bright red tabs and females or younger specimens may have orange but that is not an absolute.

I'm wondering if the cold killed them off. Is Southern IL Temps. safe for redears? Newer pond is one acre 10-12 ft deepest .clay bottom

Southern Illinois should be just fine for RES, ones sourced locally should fair a bit better than ones brought in from more southern locations. It is not unusual to stock RES and not see them for a while.

Here are a few older threads with some small RES pictures.

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.ph...true#Post304474

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=453552&page=1

Thanks , pics were helpful as well

Here is more than you ever wanted to know about RES.

RES info and links

And here is another thread with various fingerling pictures.

Fingerling sunfish

thanks a lot!