Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Show off your catch Bumps - "Warts" on Hybrid Bluegill

Please have a look at the pix below. I've caught a few Hybrid Bluegill that have these bumps along the edges of their fins. Any idea what this is, and what may be causing it?

thanks

Parasite - my guess would be yellow grubs. Better guesses will be forthcoming.

They are probably hosted by snails after being brought in by waterfowl/wading birds. If you have no Redears, they would eat the snails and help with controlling the parasites.

My HBG get those (yellow grubs) along with black grubs in the meat itself. They are harmless to the fish and it's not supposed to harm the human consumer. Theo touched on the life cycle...Birds bring the parasite into the pond in their feces, the parasites floats around looking for a snail to reproduce on/in, the baby parasites then float around and attach to the fish, and then a bird eats the fish and it starts allover again. RES are known to help reduce the snails hence breaking the chain down.

wow thanks for the detail. I did in fact stock 100 RES in June 2019....so, they should be in there. I've never caught a RES on a hook....but have caught a few 3"r's in a cast net....so know they must be there.
hopefully it doesn't become a widespread problem. My pond quite obviously has a leak, as it won't get over 3.5-4' deep. Hopefully my HBG grow up like yours some day...as mine aren't near as dark colored as yours are. Mine are more long ( less fat)...it's fairly common to catch one 8"....but not "tall and fat" like yours.

8" but not tall and fat-sounds like a green sunfish without the BG genes??

That photo'd HBG was a 2 or 3 year old and was about 7 inches long at a 1/2 pound. For the first few years in the pond, they had gazillions of FHM's to eat and I fed Optimal fish food regularly. They did not have much of a choice pertaining to weight gain. Since the FHM's have been mostly consumed, they have stalled somewhat. The largest one last year (year #4) was just over 6/10ths of a pound.

what sort of scale is best for small sized fish? I'd love to get one and hand on officially weight/measure them. I also hand feed Optimal daily....mid March'ish - October. I've never known how much to feed, and just feed 2 16oz cups daily each morning. When driving up on the dam, it looks like a 30mph wind just kicked up with all the ripples and waves headed to the dock. within seconds all the food is gone.
with regard to 8" fish, they all look similar....and these are the HBG that i stocked in AUgust 2019 that were 2-3".

Used a cheapo tabletop scale from harbor freight for a couple years before it went caput. I guess I got my money's worth though...it was cheep. I now have a 30-$40 model from Bass Pro. The kind you clamp the fish's' lip and hold up in the air. I have not used it enough to make any real review.

As far as feeding goes, the PB rule of thumb is to feed them all they can clean up in 10-20 minutes unless your wallet empties sooner. I did not have enough fish in the pond coming in at feeding time to clean up the smallest setting on my feeder in 20 minutes, so they got plenty to eat. It would throw 1 cup of Optimal Jr (or 1/4 pound) with a 1 second throw. I think most of my HBG went down the drain pipe the first year leaving a small number to benefit from that small amount of feed. I thought that they just had plenty of natural forage and just weren't hungry. It took me a few years to come to the conclusion that I did not have the numbers of fish I thought. A few hundred more fish are going in next week. I am looing forward to the 30mph winds you referred to.

You can get a digital baby scale to weigh the fish.

Here is a pic from a cast net toss this morning when feeding them.

As you can see, my "HBG" look considerably different - all have the "checker board'ish" look. I placed a red dot on all the straight run BG.

I looked at the picture above before reading and struggled to grasp why those fish had big red spots. I thought it was some new strain of fish! Damn I'm dumb !

It's the new Bluegill-Peacock Bass hybrid lol. You're not alone, I was also wondering why they had red spots on them.