Bill, Cecil, Thanks. It looks as though all of my eggs are not fertilized. All have white centers. I hope that this is not an indication that I have no males and they will not reproduce.
Now all the ribbons that I could see were somewhere between surface weeds to 2 ft down weeds. I know there are some tree roots somewhere around 4 ft deep or so that they may use as well but I havent seen many or any robbons there. All together there were only about 4 or 5 ribbons that I saw in the pond.
If we go back you might remember I added close to 100 YP and about 25 SMB to my 1/10-1/4 acre pond. Since adding them I have only put the pole in a limited number of times and each time had to work hard to catch anything. It might be that I have a large forage base and they don't want the fake stuff. I only catch a YP or two on a worm when I fish for them. They don't hit anything else.
I am starting to wonder how many of each survived. On top of all that my Fathead minnows seem to have survived and thrived throughout all of this. (I do add about 2 lbs to pond each spring to make sure there are breeding minnows there) Even though I have seen fewer minnows each spring I still see them in schools of over 5,000 swimming around. I also have tons of frogs. I am beginning to get concerned that only a very few of the original fish made it (could be heron related or other Birds). I have never seen even one floater of either YP or SMB in my pond. I have seen a few FHM floaters but that I would expect. Any thoughts here would be appreciated.
I had an interesting finding last night as I went around. As I moved the eggs sacs they started to fall apart but when they did I got small little oil type spots on the surface of the water as they eggs ruptured. Never thought about it much but I am sure that is normal but just an interesting observation.
