Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose BRES

From Iowa ST University:

Childers and Bennett (1961) made all possible crosses between bluegill, redear sunfish,
and green sunfish. They found that only female
bluegill x male green sunfish (B x G), and female green sunfish x male redear sunfish (G x
R) produced significant numbers of F1 offspring
naturally. Only female redear sunfish x male
green sunfish (Rx G) F1 hybrids exhibited a 1:1
sex ratio; all other crosses had greater than 70%
males. The female green sunfish x male bluegill
(G x B), R x B, and female bluegill x male redear
sunfish (B x R) F1 hybrids did not reproduce.

Bottom Line. If you buy lepomis hybrids of any type, you will likely get a few females if you buy enough of them. For example, if the ratio is 97%, for each 400 sold there will on average be 12 females. Some might get 6 or 4 while others get 18 or 20. Even if purely randomly. If the fastest growers in a crop were males, the sex ratios might be different for different sized fingerlings out of the same cohort.

Hybrid lepomis are going to try to reproduce. Whether they recruit ... will depend on how many of those that swim up survive predation. Whether they recruit may depend on a number of factors. For example, what predators are present (and their numbers), macrophyte coverage, percentage female, etc.

By the time you get 7 generations of them, perhaps we shouldn't call them hybrids anymore. They are evolving into a strain that the environment and management is shaping.