Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Raising Forage and Bait Can I raise Suckers?

Does anybody know, If I put suckers in a small pond 4 to 6 ft deep would they live in it and reproduce?

Suckers will live in anything but need sand or gravel bottom to spawn on.

You might be able to get reproduction with addition of a paddle wheel and addition of a spawning site. Keeping bluegill and other sunfish would also help.

What species are you talking about? Lake Chub Sucker or one of the more strongly stream associated species? I have chub suckers breeding in a quarry with sunfish for nearly 8 years now and young fish still evident.

Jim - How big are the adult lake chubsucker in the quarry after around 8 years? Are you able to sample them to assess relative numbers and sizes?

Monsters are about 8". Forage base for suckers is limited. Most of bottom is organic sediment covered bedrock. Maybe 20% of bottom covered by rubble. It is a limestone quarry with a lot of bottom right at 14' deep.

Sampling of suckers is incidental. Most taken with turtle traps so smallest animals not taken. We can see schools of juveniles in June. Nothing quantitative.

Location I use for teaching lab. Assemblage is unusual.

Lake chubsuckers are supposed to thrive in combination with smallmouth bass according to GW Bennet "Management of Lakes and Ponds". Our member Greg Grimes (Aquatic Environmental Services; Lakework.com) sees LCS as getting too large (13"-15") as good forage for southern ponds with LMB. There is quite a bit of previous discussion on the Forum about LCS. for those interested do a google search: pond boss forum lake chub sucker

Here is just one lengthy thread from 2013.
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=456321&page=1

Lake Chub Sucker Erimyzon sucetta (LSC), yes. They breed to yield basically one cohort per year. My experience with them limited in ponds. They are strongly oriented to bottom when feeding so you do not want too much rooted vegetation blocking the access for feeding suckers.

For the LCS to thrive in an IN pond it obviously should not winter kill due to too long or periods of snow cover. If the pond gets enough wind to blow off snow to make bare patches of ice without aeration this highly reduces chances of winterkill.

I'm just looking, to raise a few in a smaill 8th acre pond I put in for bait fish!!! I have some rcok in it but no sand or moving water

I viewed the lake chubsucker forum that seemed to end in 2017. I wonder if anyone has a comparison between lake chubsucker and gizzard shad for forage for largemouth bass? Or, between gizzard shad and sunfish as forage for largemouth bass? And, the comparison made for ponds rather than lakes?

We have had some show up in our pond. They are white suckers. I expect they were in the minnows when we stocked them in 2012. We catch them at the base of our waterfall in the spring just before the yellow perch lay ribbons.

I expect they are trying to spawn in the waterfall run out in the pond. We have not seen any recruitment of the white suckers yet.

Gizzard shad and lake chubsuckers are two different kettles of fish (ha).

Many, many threads on here about gizzard shad. The short story seems to be that gizzards should generally never be stocked in small ponds unless certain conditions are met.

Here's a pond boss mag reprint that talks about it:

https://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/shad_pond.html

IT would be great to have more forum goers to get experience with lake chubsuckers. White suckers don't seem to reproduce in ponds but lake chubsuckers will. THey like clearer water (rather than turbid) and their eggs stick to vegetation so in my pond that creates a problem.

But if they like the conditions in your pond they produce copious offspring that are easy to spot. THe young are in schools with very dark black stripes down their side. IT may be hard to establish in a pond that already has predators in it, but if you could raise them in a forage pond or in a tank that had plenty of clean oxygenated water and you could release larger quantities at once you might be pleasantly surprised.

It would help a lot if more fish farms offered it as a forage species. I do not believe they would pellet train so that may be why fish farms don't raise and sell them.

I have a great population in my SMB/YP pond, and moved some to the new pond along with FHM, but few plants in it so far.