setterguy, I am planning to stock my pond with the same fish you have starting this spring. some things I read about the GSH(bait stealing ) make me hesitate on stocking them. are you getting YP and RES/HBG recruitment?
any other cons to the GSH?
I figured with SMB and HSB and plenty of open water they would keep the GSH numbers down. I also thought if they are easy to catch they would make great catfish bait for river fishing if overpopulated.
XRay,
I'm not sure about YP & RES recruitment. I've been totally invaded by frogs, of all kinds. Mostly bullfrogs. Every trap I've used fills up with tadpoles in minutes.
Last fall I was seeing schools of small fish all around the dock, and along the shorelines. I was hoping to be able to catch some, nand identify them. No luck.. I'm thinking that with so many ribbons last spring, and many beds observed with RES, that I had some recruitment. That and the fact that I lost so many GSH when stocked. I hope they are not cleaning up all the RES and YP fry. I don't have much bait stealing going on. Once I figured out how to catch YP, we've had a lot of success. I had never seen a YP, until we stocked them.
Wish I could give you better info. In April my YP and RES will have been in the pond for two years. I added the SMB and HSB in Oct of the same year (2015).
So, I'm still in the early stages of my learning curve. I put in way too many YP when I did my initial stocking, but had a large number that didn't survive, so I don't have a very clear picture of fish density. We've harvested a lot of YP, and have found them to be easy to clean and delicious. Hopefully I will eventually e able to trap some fry, and see what's reproducing successfully. At this time my GSH have not been a problem in any way, at least that I'm aware of.
I do run a feeder, but it's more of a supplementary feed program instead of providing all of what my fish need. (About 50 pounds a month of Optima)
If I get time I'm going to try and build a real fish trap that will funnel everything into a big net. Maybe then I'll see what I've really got. I'm an absentee pond owner, with too many irons in the fire..
