Shorty verifies our thinking that too many shiners can likely reduce the amount of recruitment of preferred sport fish and or other small beneficial forage fish. SMB are not always reliable for producing good spawns each year. Thus that may also play a role is lack of SMB recruitment for Shorty's pond. One thing that I would strongly consider if I had too many adult shiners I would start adding a few hybrid striped bass for a couple years and watch the relative density of shiners present. HSB will not reproduce in the pond so one has pretty good control of the predation pressure upon the shiners. As the HSB grow they should eat more of the larger shiners. These two fish species are IMO a real good combination of prey and predator. I also think HSB will on a yearly average eat more shiners compared to a SMB due to innate feeding habits. HSB and shiners are primarily 'open water' fish so these two species will interact a large percent of the time. Shorty has been very good keeping track of numbers of shiners removed each year. These data will allow him better see the predatory impact of HSB on the shiner population.
This thread is not going into the archives in both the HSB and Forage fish. There should be an archive topic for Golden shiners. If there isn't one I or Theo Gallus will create one sometime soon.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 10/22/22 11:08 AM.
