duckbutt:
Good topic for conversation. Have a couple comments and questions. First, what I have done is very similar but my observations are a little different. You may be 1-year ahead of me, maybe more given the difference in climate.
We had an existing 0.1 acre 3-foot deep pond out in the woods, which we expanded to 2 acres. There were small numbers of green sunfish, turtles, crayfish, invertebrates, etc. in the old pond (this was before I found Pond Boss). We did not want to kill off all the critters that were barely scratching out the Michigan winters and allowed them to expand into the new digs, reasoning that they would form the "seed" for predators that we would add later.
The first thing we did was stock 4-6" LMB (75) in order to reduce the GS population. The next year we added a small number of 6-8" channel cats (12), adult BG (50) and RES (25). We also put in large numers of minnows (first two years only) and have always fed the LMB 2x/day. The first two years, We removed a large number of GS in the Spring, which isn't hard to do because of their aggressivenes. All the doom and gloom regarding GS still concerned me.
This is the third year. My LMB and CC were reaching 18" this Spring and the BG spawns were largely unsuccessful so we did not remove any GS this year in order to provide more forage for the growing LMB population (two successful spawns). We also added more adult BG and RES.
I stopped worrying about the GS recalling comments by Bob Lusk indicating that any mature pond will likely have a few GS and that BG will eventually out reproduce GS. In addition, many have indicated that LMB may prefer grazing on GS vs BG due to their lower profile.
We have since found that past BG spawns were apparently more successful than thought (based on the number of 3-4" BG I'm now seeing) and this year should be an explosion. My observations are that there are also a large number of hybrid BG/GS.
The most aggressive fish in the pond are the GS. They feed on pellets when they reach 3" and are aggressive breeders as well. They bed in amongst the BG with the RES usually in separate areas.
Here is my question:
I don't understand how a pond can be dominated by natural hybrids for more than one (maybe a few years). If the hybrids are 70% males with low fecundity, shouldn't the pure strains eventually dominate? Especially with the multiple BG spawning events per year (they are still on the beds).
I'm expecting to see an overall reduction in GS in the next few years. We expect to start removing the intermediate sized BG and any GS caught next year. I expect that a high percentage of the panfish caught will be GS.
Is this reasoning valid?
