Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Blue gill spawning beds

I will be retiring in a few years within 1 hr. of Okhissa. If it's half as good as they say it will be, I will be happy. Ewest, I'm afraid the secret is out on the Clear Springs hidden jewel. It is on the top 10 list for camping/hiking on GORP or one of those type sites.

Pictures posted of 9.9 pounder at Calling Panther: Log onto mdwfp.com Click Fisheries (blue tab at top of web page) On the righthand side click on State Lake Moderated Forum scroll down to Lake Calling Panther then scroll down till you get to the picture, a real beauty.FS

Dang nice bass Fishshocker!


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As this thread is about BG/RES beds I thought I would post a pic of them during drawdown. Note the size and number of rocks.

Ewest, this is an interesting picture of exposed BG/RES spawning beds
.
Early last year we had a massive invasion of bushy pondweed..
When the water was at lowest drought stage, we had BG beds exposed on top of dead pondweed that looked very similar to your pictures.

Proved to me that BG will spawn on anything.
Wish now that I had taken a picture.


George Glazener

George :

Think about what your beds were like when water was up. Beds on bottom with weeds around them. The 2 places colony spawners like BG/RES will avoid are locations with lots of silting and places with "thick" weeds where little or no light will penetrate. They will spawn in normal weeds and IMO prefer hard clay/gravel locations very near or interspersed amongst weed beds. They are survivors and will spawn in the best location they can find and will adapt to the situation.

Late last summer I had about thirty spawning pairs in my reproduction pond, and there had been a bloom of sago pondweed which reach from shore to shore in this little pond. I observed the males furiously fanning the sago to make flat spots in the vegetation. Eventually the sago laid down and they still hadn't gotten to the clay substate.

They pulled off a spawn anyway.

Bruce :

No doubt they are survivors and will spawn even if the conditions are bad and the survival of the fry will not be optimal. I have seen a solitary RES spawn on top of an indented stump in the weeds.

The question to me is what are the best pond locations and conditions for optimal BG/RES spawning and fry survival and how can pond mgrs. improve this aspect of the pond ?

Great photos, Eric!

I thought it a good idea to revive this thread with a new bit of info.

BG nest site selection article in the new In-Fisherman issue by SDSU student Quinton Phelps and our own Professor Dave Willis.

In this lake every BG nest site had a substrata of small gravel despite the availability of sand , rock and muck at other locations. No other habitat characteristic seemed to be a critical factor that influenced in nest location. It is good to know that this forum was on top of this 14 mths prior to In-Fisherman. Cutting edge !! - right .

There is also an article on crawfish life cycles.

Spawning beds seem to be a common question. Hopefully adding this new post will correct the old link.

New thread on old question - spawning beds