DD1 is the greatest advocate on the forum for Green Sunfish.

My Daughter #2 completely agrees with Dave about catching GSF versus BG.

When she was very young she loved going fishing in a pond with both species. The BG would start moving her bobber around, and then partially take it under, so she would set the hook. She would miss the fish, then ask me to put on another bit of worm, and she would cast back into the same spot. After the same result a few more times, she would lament, "Those are the sneaky fish there Dad, I am going to move so I can catch the good ones."

She would then move to the other edge of the brush pile, and be happy as can be when a GSF would then hit the worm hard, bobber goes under, and then she has a nice little fight on the spinning rod with a GSF. Further, their mouths were large enough that I could stick my thumb in to hold the fish and easily remove the hook and slap on another 1/2" of worm.

Rinse and repeat until she had cleaned out all of the "good" GSF, and the "sneaky fish" would then be the only ones nibbling.


To expand on DD1s comment: There are many people on Pond Boss that have trophy/eating size BG as the main goal of their pond. They manage the LMB population to cull the smaller BG such that most of the biomass of BG in the pond is made up of larger individuals.

GSF are more aggressive to angling and breed more slowly. Therefore, I believe it would actually be easier to have a "trophy" GSF pond compared to a BG pond!

In Kansas, the State Record BG is 2.31# and the record GSF is 2.36#. However, the record hybrid BG is 2.65#

I do NOT know the reasons why no one has tried for that type of pond using GSF. I think our experts do greatly prefer eating BG compared to GSF? (Might be wrong on the one?) I also do not know if GSF will slurp up pellets that same way that BG will?

Maybe some of our panfish experts can give you some better advice. In your small pond, perhaps a fun GSF fishery might be the optimal use?