Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking Unwanted bluegill in SMB, yp pond

I have a post going in another thread but thought I’d start a new one here to see if I get anymore advice. have 0.4 acre pond dug last fall stocked with fhm. This spring I put in 100 perch 3-8”) and 50 res(3-4”). I put out a minnow trap last week in 3 different spots for no more than 10min in each location and caught 7what I believe to be standard bg. My plan was to have a yp, res, smb pond. Would it be wise to bite the bullet and start over now since it is unlikely SMB will keep up with the bg? How many years will I get before I have too many stunted bg and need to add lmb or start over then? My goals are to have a pond for the kids to swim in and do a little fishing. I’m not looking for trophy class sizes and would like to have enough to harvest for dinner a few times a year. Here is the pic of what is believed to be a bg. It may be a res I’m just thinking with the amount I caught in short period of time that it is unlikely the res spawned that much?

Looks like a BG to me.

In 0.4 acre, you might be able to control BG numbers through angling. I have a 0.5 acre SMB/YP/CC/RES/BGxRES pond and remove a few hundred BGxRES by fishing every year to keep their numbers reasonable. (1-2 hours every other week during the warm months.) Since I feed regularly (about 5 days a week), about a third of the BGxRES are eating size. The pond record is a 13 1/4" 2 1/2 pounder. YP are doing well, the CC are eating small fish and pellets and then getting turned into blackened catfish (yum), and I caught a 20" SMB last week. I am happy with the situation.

How much fishing do you want to do? How much would you be willing to spend to reset the pond? Can you be sure no more BG will get into it in the future?

I have a similar pond here in Missouri. Only my HBG mess was self inflicted. Unfortunately the HBG I stocked, have reproduced, or crossed with the RES. I keep traps set all the time for raccoons and possums to help our turkeys. I find the HBG are great for baiting the traps. As an added aggravation, they continue to nip at swimmers.
I did add golden shiners when I stocked the SMB. My golden shiners have continued to hang in there. The FHM disappeared very quickly. The SMB and YP made short work of them. The pond was actually loaded with them, as I stocked them alone a full year before I stocked anything else. My SMB have done well. Reproduced to a limited degree, but they cannot control the HBG/RES cross offspring. We have added YP a few times, as we enjoy eating them as much as we like catching them. I don’t think I would start over. Just catch and destroy all the BG that you can. If you haven’t added golden shiners, you might want to consider them.
Biggest SMB we’ve caught so far. My lovely wife has the pond record.

Sweet smallie, SetterGuy!!!

Agree with Theo. I have an acre pond in Nebraska with smallies, yellow perch, wiper, redears, golden shiners and hybrid bluegill. In the process of removing walleye as they're the only species not really looking healthy when caught. And bluegill somehow managed to get in at some point. We've only caught 2 in the last 2 years, so not overly worried about it. Just fish it regularly and remove all you catch. And trapping is good too.

That is a dandy smb setter! I don’t mind fishing them a few times a week I just know our summers get busy with sports and I don’t want fish nipping at swimmers as I would say that is our main use for the pond. I don’t know how much it cost to poison the pond but since I only have the yp and res in now I’d rather do it then after I get smb(they are not cheap!)

It's a good thought. Just try to figure out how those bluegill got in there in the first place, so you can prevent it from happening again.

Two "keepers" in one picture!

That fish in the picture has no evidence of any ear tab, so how can anyone say with confidence what specie it is. RES and BG look very much alike when they are small enough the ear tab is not even apparent yet. The fish also to me looks to be stunted and not growing well (food shortage &/or just runts) ) because of the enlarged eye. Eyes continue to grow when food is limited for body growth. I think that fish is one of the slow growers (1"-2") that you bought from Stoney Creek as RES this spring. If it turns out to be a BG then IMO their RES were contaminated with BG.

One thing that would help identify the specie is to get a good picture of the gill rakers. BG will have long rakers and RES have short rakers. Another character that I use to separate BG from RES is the pectoral fin is longer for the RES. However it requires a fair amount of experience and numerous comparisons to use this feature.

Curious about the stunted and large eye comment? Granted I stocked CNBG but all of them had large eyes like that and they are far from stunted

That lepomis is indeed stunted.

Bill I don’t remember any of the res being that small when I stocked from Stoney creek. Maybe they were and I’m just not realizing it. I was under the assumption that I had some bg or res spawn this spring and these are the offspring. Do you think that would be a possibility or is that to big to be this years? I’ll try to trap a few more and get some better pics. Here is a res my daughter caught last night. I think we caught 5 of them by rod/reel last night. Does this look stunted? I thought the ones we’ve caught have all looked pretty healthy

Here is the only other one I have a pic of. It’s the first one I had caught last week

The eyes are MUCH smaller wrt body size on the two RES you posted. I would say "Not stunted".

By comparison, the eye on the first fingerling you posted is much larger wrt body size = stunted.

I don't think the first fish is 100% BG. Check the gill rakers. Note that the bars on the side of the fish stop at the lateral line. That would be uncommon for a pure northern BG.

It sure seems like you did get some good redear, along with some amount of bluegill. I agree with others to just fish as many as you can out, along with maybe some other methods like traps and seines.

I've never tried this, but I wonder if you could use a cast need when feeding. I was under the assumption that redear tended to not be at the surface as much as regular bluegill. Of course, cast nets take practice, and I have no idea if the fish would get wise to it quick or not.

JoshMi You said The RES were 2-3” at stocking from Stoney creek fish farm in Grant,Mi. To me that fish in your first picture looked to be 2"-2.5" however there was no length gauge in the picture. Normally size class fish from a fish farm have a pretty wide variation of sizes esp those in the 2"-3" group. Those could have some 1.5" to 3.5".

ewest - do you have some pictures of the gill rakers for 3"-5" RES?

Bill the pic of the minnow bg/res is deceiving. I should have clarified- these are prob only 1” fish I’m trapping.. I’ll go out here in a few minutes and should be able to trap a couple more. Not sure I’ll be able to see much in the gills they are so small but what should I be looking for as far as the hill rakers are concerned

BG - There are 13-16 moderately long primary gill rakers on the 1st arch. See pic above.

Here are 3 more that I just trapped today along with a ruler for comparison. How big do bg typically need to be to pull off a spawn? Could these be this springs offspring? I’ll have to go back and open up the gills again.

Still looking for pic of RES gill rakers.

INSTITUTE FOR FISHERIES RESEARCH DIVISION OF' FISHERIES MICHIGAN DEPARTMENT OF CONSERVATION COOPERATING WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN GERALD P. COOPER PH.D. D1111:CTOII Report No. 1689 June 10, 1964 Fish Section Research and Development Education-Game Institute for Fisheries Res. K. G. Fukano Dingell-Johnson Region I - Fish Region II- Fish Rigg~J;f+0 J'=ij:\} ANNE:X ANN ARBOR. MICHIGAN INTRODUCTION OF EXOTIC FISH INTO MICHIGANV by K. G. Fukano, H. Gowing, M. J. Hansen, and L. N. Allison

Redear sunfish--Lepomis microlophus (Guinther) This is a southern fish that has occurred in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to some extent. It ranges southeastward to west Florida and south westward to the Rio Grande {Forbes and Richardson, 192,)). Lopinot (1961) states that the redear sunfish can now be found throughout most of Illinois. Gerking (1945) states that the original range of the redear sunfish in Indiana has been obscured by propagation and stocking by the state fish hatcheries since 1932. A1tho'..1gh this fish has been planted in both lakes and streams in Indiana, it has thrived only in the lakes. Trautman (1957) claims that the redear sunfish was not native to Ohio and that where it has been introduced J.orth of its original range,

The redear sunfish has three anal-fin spines and large scales (53 or fewer in lateral line); teeth are lacking on tongue; the pectoral fins are very long and pointed at tip; the gill-rakers are short, blunt, and often crooked; the opercle has a broad scarlet margin (Hubbs and Lagler, 194 7).

Ball (1952) moved redear sunfish to central Michigan where they apparently can withstand winter conditions and reproduce in ponds. They appear to be less prolific than bluegills, and have no-l: become overly abundant when stocked with largemouth bass.

Those 3 fish look like the RES you posted that was larger. look at the bars on the side which are like the RES you posted. The difference is the small ones have not developed the red ocular flap (ear tab) margin yet. I wonder if they are hybrids of RES and BG. Do the pictured fish have a long slender pectoral fin like the one at the bottom of this post?

They do have the long slender pectoral fin. As far as gill rakers all I can see is a white line I can’t really see any of the spikes or anything coming off, they are too small

When I put on my phone with the light in the back I could see little tiny spikes but too small to count(I don’t have a magnifying glass or I may have been able to) and there was no way to tell of if short and blunt or long and pointy. I guess I would say short as they were barely visible but short is a relative word without something to compare it to. (I think there’s a joke in there somewhere but I’m not going there)