Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose where are my golden shiners

So after reading a good bit on that thread you posted I am questioning if the GSH bait pond is even a viable option.

If they were to quit spawning after several yrs, I would be without a food source for my pond.

Although I guess I could always at that point in time, switch to bluegill or a different breed of fish in my bait pond.

What are you guys theories on it? TIA

My (non-expert) theory, is that there are still lots of ponds that have viable, reproducing golden shiner populations. Which I believe are dependent upon conditions in the pond.

If you have suitable living and spawning habitat for the GSH, and an appropriate food source, then the shiners can become an excellent forage source fish in your pond.

I believe it is due to the "delayed detonation" of the infertility infection. Even if the mature females become infertile, there is a period where the fingerling GSH grow to reach sexual maturity and yield a spawn or two before they subsequently become infertile.

I kind of view GSH as a "low risk" experiment like tilapia are anywhere north of the deep south. If the experiment does NOT provide a benefit to your pond, then it will self-correct as the population dies out.

(That applies where the experiment "failed" due to not establishing a reproducing population of GSH. There are ponds with small-gape top predators, that can fail where the GSH are barely reproducing, but no predators are eating the largest infertile shiners and the pond now contains a large biomass of non-beneficial fish.)

Not all GS populations have the disease. Find the right hatchery and ask questions. Another method is to buy the 250,000-shiner fry option and overwhelm the population issue with numbers.

Yeah that would not be a bad option, I did the Anderson minnow fry thing when I first built the pond and had great success with them.

Although I did get more from the fish supplier that stocked my pond later, and he assured me that a couple dozen young GSH that I stocked later will hatch out as many fry as the two bags I bought from Anderson, which shoulda been approx 500k.

gehajake and others interested. The fish supplier was correct that a couple dozen mature GSH are capable of producing two bags of the quantity of GSH fry that are or would be shipped PROVIDING the couple dozen mature GSH have good spawning habitat. But with poor spawning substrate and poor pond conditions then few fry will be produced. Also if the pond has abundant small fish that can or will eat the GSH eggs before they hatch then few fry will be produced. As always "It all depends".

That's what I am trying to decipher now is what constitutes good spawning structure for the GSH to procreate in.

The predation from other fish should be minimal as the plan is to not have any other species in the bait pond, I am even making the drain into the big pond above water level to prevent contamination by fish swimming back up the drain pipe, in case its left open for a short period of time after draining.

Thanks for the input!

SARC has info on producing GSH and spawntex is one source for spawning mats used as spawning structure for them.

Look at this link for quality info

https://extension.rwfm.tamu.edu/wp-...n-Shiner-Culture-A-Reference-Profile.pdf

Thanks ewest. That is good reading.
The article describes shiner schooing activity as small schools. Maybe my fish are traveling in relatively small groups and number of schools is also low.
Until about a month ago, the elodea was covering as much as 75% of the pond volume. We spent many hours over a few days dragging the stuff out, forming large piles on the shores of the pond. As the shiners chose submergent vegetation for spawning habitat, they should have had more than they needed. I'll be watching for aggregations of fry.
I have seen, on a few occasions, a silvery fish leap a couple or three or more feet through the air as if trying to escape from a predator. These jumping individuals appear to be 5" to 7" long, consistent with what a GSH could look like.
Those of you with established GSH populations, do you see them jump in this way?