12 females, even if only 3"-4" in length should produce a fair amount of fingerlings. That 25 number was gnawing at me in way that got me thinking ... you've seen that number before. It was in a Todd Overton post on RES:
In 2004 we stocked out about 25 3"-4" redears in 1/2 acre then harvest about 10,000 1"-3" fish in the fall. Reproductive potential is about 25% of bluegill potential based on one season of farm production with same number of brooders in same size pond.
I presume a similar stocking of 25 BG in the 3"-4" sizes could produce 40,000 fingerlings based on his comment. 6"-8" brood females could produce as much as 8 times as many eggs so somewhere between 40,000 and 320,000 fingerlings potential.
Was kind of wondering why Todd would use small (probably unsexed) brooders as brood. But it made a lot of sense from this perspective. The first cohort was probably relatively small and these could reach 3" but not be too numerous to allow a second larger cohort. I suspect almost all the fingerlings recovered are from the first 2 spawns and most from the 2nd. Additional attempts to spawn probably would be unsuccessful because of the huge standing population of fingerling BG.
