Thanks, Snipe.
I don't recall all of cat's pond details, but his catch rate of these somewhat deformed fish sounds very, very high. Or he fishes way, way more than others. Theo's comment about early stocking survival of such a fish makes sense and in cat's case, it seems it's a long existing pond with no supplement stocking,
I maybe should not have said 'in-breeding.' It does seem like cat has a lot of these fish.
19 acre watershed. I fish year round if the mood strikes me. A couple times a week at times, once every few weeks at other times. Others (the kids and friends) fish too. I try to remove enough fish to grow some bigger ones. Two days ago when I caught the humpback I kept 38.
I'm told the pond is 30+ yrs old. Noone knows of it being stocked.
Thanks for the replies. It's really interesting stuff!
