Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Can Anyone Tell Me What This Little One Is?

I was raking some muck out around the shore of my pond (Central OH) and kept bringing in these little ones. Decided to stop and try again when it's warmer in hopes they won't be so close to shore. Can anyone tell me what it is? Thanks, Gus

Looks to me like a BG of some sort

Ya maybe a bluegill, my sunfish look like that right now but not sure if you have them around there.

Looks a lot like BG to me.

Yes - think they are BG. The features are same as for most BG of that size.

All agree the fingerling is a BG. So now ... what's everyone's first thought about its length?

Late summer/early fall hatch in the south. Early summer hatch north.
For OH, probably mid to late summer '24

Yes, but what is your first impression of "how long that fish is"? Just wondering if there would be as much agreement on what length that fish is. I figure you are able to quickly determine length give or take an 1/8 in or so. But do we all have that level of trained eye? For example, if we all were raking without a measuring device dredged up an identical sized BG, then took a photo and tossed it back ... just using our first impressions ... what would we say the length that BG is and would we all agree? If we used our hands as a reference to estimate length, would the length we determine be different than our first impression of casual eyeballing?

Does anyone find this post useful?

I'll guess the length. If the base of the guy's middle finger is 1" then the BG is 2.5" long. The hand looks more robust than my slender hand. The the BG could be 2.75" long. It is all based on the width of the middle finger.

Thank you Bill. That's exactly the same length I got but using the width of my last 3 fingers.

Today I finally began seeing BG and LMB in my favorite pond. We've been having nights in the 50s until the last few days and only now have I been able to observe the BG and sample them. I did that rather casually using width of my hand (where the fingers meet the palm) as a guide. That width is 3.5".

No fish were that small. The smallest BG was 4". The most numerous BG were between 4" and 5" in length and I caught BG up to about 6". The pond does grow BG up to about 8" in length. For whatever reason, the water has never produced an LMB > 18" and a 16" LMB is a really good one in that pond. Year after year, the predominate size of BG is 4" to 5" until there is a good hatch of BG and for a time there are examples that are smaller. I see examples smaller than 4" going into Fall and by Spring ... smaller BG appear to be gone and no longer contribute to samples.

As for why I asked the question ... before I started measuring small BG (either by tape or surrogate) ... for reasons I can't explain ... my tendency was to underestimate the length of a little BG just eyeballing it. Anyways, for most of my adult life I have used the full length of my hand as a measure of 7" and so often I would use my hand length to casually judge lengths of decent sized BG. It's something you can do without much handling before releasing. But for little BG, using portions like finger length and widths is handy (pun intended).

It is a creative and interesting way of quickly estimating length of small fish. It would be wise for pond owners to know the width of the last three and all four fingers. Make some measurements all you interested pond owners.