Originally Posted by jpsdad
Originally Posted by Sunil
I'm starting to believe that an adult Golden Shiner of 5", 6", and 7"+ can easily survive predation in a pond with 3, 4, and 5 lb.+ LMB, 3-5lb and much greater CC, and 4 lb.+ HSB. I'm thinking they may be too fast, or too keen to be taken.

My neighborhood pond is 1/4 acre when full pool (less than 1/3 of the non-winter time), and is basically a basin of a rectangle shape, reducing at the same slope. Little vegetation if any....a bit of FA on and off. Clumps of X-Mas trees in various states of decay, but none with any needles.

Very little place to hide if any. But those adult GSH are there, in force at times.

I do feed, but only a few times a week.

For several years, I did the Anderson Fish Farm Golden Shiner Fry thing. Certainly established GSH in the pond with many, many adult predator fish.

I think Sunil is spot on with this assessment. Absolute spot on. Also, I do like his approach to minnows in general. Stocking large enough numbers to get good recruitment of fry and/or (in the case of GSH stocking the fry in large numbers). Anyways, with regard to his observation/assessment above ... I would like to share some additional context. I use a probability function to model the probability an LMB will consume a prey item when pursuing the prey item fair chase where the prey item is in healthy condition and acclimated to predators. The function is limited where the probability intersects zero around 5% of the weight of an LMB. IOWs when a prey item is healthy and is conditioned to predation, an LMB just can't subdue and capture it if the prey item exceeds 5% of the weight of the LMB. It is important to note that an LMB can still swallow such a fish but to capture it or slight larger fish they must be unconditioned to predation and/or sick or in the process of dying.

According to the function a 7" GSH has a 1% chance of being consumed when a 18" standard weight LMB pursues it. For a 20.6" standard weight LMB (5 lbs), the probability is about 4%. Prey these sizes are consumed but they do not make up a large percentage of the consumption and once having achieved 7" stand a high chance of surviving to their natural end of life where the cause of being predated is old age and/or sickness. A 7" GSH is very good prey for a 25" LMB but it is not as energetically favorable as a 6" GSH ... when the respective prey densities are equal. To be as energetically favorable, the 7" GSH must be more numerous than the 6" GSH to compensate for the greater level of difficulty the LMB will experience in trying to subdue it.

This is a VERY good example of where book "theory", probability function & other "sit behind a desk" theories vs. actual real world "on the water experience" diverge. I stocked 200-250 GSH that looked like this in my pond.

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

Absolutely spot on theory and probability function would indicate that ALL of them should survive because there were absolutely zero LMB in the pond that were bigger than 18".

Real world sampling showed that absolutely NONE of them survived more than 4 months in the pond. If they would have died in the pond and not been consumed, at least one would have been seen dead in the pond. Nope, not a one. . The largemouth in the pond were pellet trained, and were eating pellets thrown by an automated feeder 2x per day. The "LMB like to eat fish between 1/4 and 1/3 their body length" statement goes out the window when the fish are soft rayed, fusiform shaped fish. LMB will eat whatever they can fit in their mouth if they are hungry and the opportunity to eat that prey is there.

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[Linked Image from lh6.ggpht.com]
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3/4 to 1 1/4 ac pond LMB, SMB, PS, BG, RES, CC, YP, Bardello BG, (RBT & Blue Tilapia - seasonal).