Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Sunfish-Including Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass bluegill ceviche

TGW1 actually probably 95% of what I have called BG that we have cleaned have been HBG or to a lesser degree HRES. A few full blood BG and a few GSF in the mix.

Back story of why that is: A couple years back I had a huge spawn of hybrids in my sediment pond (I presume due to turbidity in that pond) that I was having a fish kill that I described back then. May have been three years back. But while the fish were gaping air at the surface there happened to be a lot of wind blowing them to one end of the small sediment pond. I had been raising CNBG and RES in that pond (had already moved a lot of the original stockers over by catching them hook and line) and did not want to lose them so I just dip netted all I could and went right across the road with them into my main pond. Along with the remaining full blood CNBG and RES (and their spawn recruitment) and a few GSF were lots and lots of hybrids that were spawned by those fish. As time was of the essence (the fish were going to be dead shortly if I did not do something) I did not take time to sort anything, just dumped them in the main pond. So a lot of hybrids went into the pond.

Those are the fish we are harvesting now. The bulk of them around 3/4# with a few larger and some smaller.

Basically we have been harvesting the hybrids and returning the pure BG and CNBG back to the pond unless they are just not a good looking specimen or we gut hook them.

I really like the hybrids for a meat fish. They go crazy for the commercial fish food, seem to grow fast and are not shy about biting a hook. It is very common when we first start fishing in a certain spot to catch several hybrids and maybe a GSF, then as the spot catch rate slows down start catching BG. So common I notice it again and again. The GSF in those fish just make them very aggressive to being caught compared to my regular full blooded BG.

But wanting to reduce the bio load in the pond and give room for the remaining fish to grow we target the HBG and CC for the fish we most want to remove. I still get a fair amount of hybrids produced every year out of that sediment pond and during really big rain events they end up down stream in my main pond. I don't mind it a bit because I am more of a "catcherman" rather than a fisherman. If I don't have high catch rates, I find something more interesting to do than fish. So that is the story on how we have been "culling".

We are catching a fair number of the CNBG that were originally raised in that sediment pond. Beautiful fish. We always return those no matter what size.