yes, one of our favorite topics! The spontaneous combustion/conception of fish in unsupervised ponds!!

Seriously, there should be an easy way to test this. Our texas friends and those in the deep south say that in their experience even a puddle from a thunderstorm will in a few days be populated with gambusia.

So someone with a excavator or scoop on their tractor should just go in the back 40 and scoop out 3-4 shallow trenches and let them fill with rain water.

Then set up some controlled environments. Cover one with netting so that insects can fly in but birds and animals cannot. Make sure that no animals can wade in with fish egg-encrusted feet. Make sure that kingfishers or GBH cannot regurgitate fish as they fly overhead. If you really want to control the environment then set up game cameras to make sure no human trespasser is bucket stocking.

Then on the other trenches you can leave the top open to the sky but fence/mesh off the sides so that land critters can't enter but all entries from the sky are allowed.

Then leave another open completely.

See if by summer any of them have fish in it! many on this forum insist that by summer one of them for sure will even have green sunfish in it!

Last edited by canyoncreek; 02/20/19 10:20 AM.