Originally posted by kemp31:
...call me crazy...
You're not crazy, you're just a pond neurotic like the rest of us.
Your story is one we've heard before. It seems like the green sunfish is the fish most likely to survive the nuclear holocaust. Two ponds that I've been asked to manage and supposedly had never been stocked were found to be loaded with green sunfish. Although every situation varies dependent on it's own unique circumstances, the two ponds I mentioned both ultimately were rid of their greenies by LMB predation. Both times the GS population dropped for two years, then disappeared the third year, and in each case there were a few GS X BG hybrids that showed up for another four or five years. If your pond is designed in a way that allows sight predators to thrive, then the GS are unlikely to ever be a big player in your pond. Ponds with poor clarity, super high levels of rooted vegetation, or heavy predator harvest seem to have more persistent GS populations in my experience.
