Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Golden Shiners - What size to stock?

Hi everyone: I am new to the site. I have a pond of about 1/4 acre and 6-7' deep in southeastern Pennsylvania. It is an old pond with an established population of bass and bluegills.

There was a time when the pond was loaded with golden shiners but one of our neighbors began stocking it with mature lm bass and the shiners were eventually wiped out. This was about 20 years ago.

The bass in the pond have returned to normal levels and there are a variety of size between the bass. Some are 1" and a few are around 20" or more.

I would like to reestablish a baitfish population. I have tried fatheads without success. My plan is to fish out a bunch of bass and larger bluegills, then stock a few pounds (probably 6 lbs) of golden shiners.

6 pounds of 4" shiners would be about 150 fish.
6 pounds of 2" shiners would be about 1,200 fish.

Here is my question: Should I get large shiners (4"+) so that the remaining bass are less likely to eat them? My thought was that this might allow them to live long enough to reproduce.

The other option is to buy several pounds of 2" shiners and hope that the increased number would allow them to get established and reproduce. What do you think? Would the 2" grow fast enough that they would end up becoming more than 150 4 inchers before the bass ate them?

Thanks for any help.

Thanks. Good idea. I tried to chase any bass out by walking around in the water but it got so murky, I really couldn’t see. I’ll probably try to stock 50 more on Saturday if I can catch them. Our daily creel limit for baitfish is 50.

Theeck, stocking any fish into a mature pond is expensive. You would get more gain from spending your $13.50/lb GShiner price on a 50 pound bag of cheap catfish food for your BG and YP to eat than small fish.

Golden Shiners under 4" would be a complete waste of your money as none would avoid predation, and live long enough to reproduce. Same with fry. Four inch plus, emphasis on the plus, are brood stock and would provide not only your best chance of GShiners establishing, it's really your only chance.

You will also need proper habita.... considerably dense "grassy" type vegetation, as anthropic mentioned. Not only for fry to hide in, but for brooders to spawn in also. I see your son caught some Yellow Perch....YP are a GREAT forage species for LMB!!! A 12" LMB can make a pound packing meal out of a 10" YP.

Anderson says they stock 2.5" in spring in new production ponds and have excellent results with reproduction that year.
Now, this is obviously without predation, so take that into account.

I wouldn't worry about the parasite. A customer has a 4 acre pond where the GSH have a self-sustaining population. His Hybrid Crappie and HSB are growing VERY well. Last week or 2 weeks ago a 16" Hybrid Crappie that was 3 years old weighed 2.25#. It was stocked as a 3" fish.

I have gotten my GSH from one supplier for 10+ years. Even 10"+ fish seem to be spawning. No way to ID if the spawn from any particular fish is successful, but if the habitat is there, there will be a reproducing population in the pond. Many pond owners don't understand that different fish need different spawning habitat.

I was told today when talking to a person about their pond and spawing habitat, that they put plenty of pea gravel in the pond. RES/YP/GSH/FHM/SMB pond.

I got a blank stare when I asked if they put any habitat in the pond for the YP/SMB/FHM/GSH to spawn on.

GSH can work well and be established. Best to start them just after the FH are going good. Be sure to have a good plankton base and the right spawning material (matts are good ). The 250000 fry method also works. Then add BG or other sunfish. Best advice if using LMB is to be sure forage base is about 4 times what is suggested.

I threw a line with a size 12 hook to check over the weekend and the fish are shiners in the video. Maybe they look weird because I lured them into shallow water with the feed. I got small trout pellets and threw them out this weekend and they were eating them. It seems the shiners in our pond like to cruise around the open water. I keep seeing them in schools near the surface in 4-6' of water.

I also put a pound of fatheads in the pond and, more significantly, put 2 pounds of fatheads in the 700-gallon stock tank. I set up a bug zapper over it and put raw hamburger on a piece of wood a couple inches above the water line to draw flies. I left the water flowing in for now but it is around 59 degrees in the tank. I might switch to an aerator this weekend. I tried feeding the fatheads but they were not interested. They were all bunched up at the bottom right below the water intake and seemed to be hiding in the muck at the bottom. Maybe this is what they normally do or maybe the temps affected this. I hope to be up there tomorrow so I can see how they are doing. I know of 2 shallow ponds (part of a small marsh set back from a river) on public ground nearby that don't appear to hold any fish - just water bugs and tadpoles. I may dump some in and see if the can establish a population. It's public so I could always go back and trap them if it works.

Messing around, I caught a 19" bass in the pond. I probably should have removed it but it grew that big without shiners so I put him back hoping he would only eat so many before the shiners spawn (being optimistic). The bass is pictured next to size 12 boots.

There were also some kind of eggs or slime attached to plants in the water but I suspect it might be from red spotted newts. Any ideas on the slime? Thanks for all the help.

[img]https://i.postimg.cc/zb8q1Nv6/181.avif[/img]

[img]https://i.postimg.cc/K1TbkjgC/187.avif[/img]

[img]https://i.postimg.cc/4KbTP0P5/207.avif[/img]

To my experience they move like small shiners. Shiners have that characteristic swimming habit - quick and jerky.

It's my first year really looking at the baby fish and trying to see what has or hasn't spawned and my experience so far is that I'm 100% guessing at everything I see. There is good news here to though.

In one of my first posts after seeing something I couldn't explain at the pond (looked like pepper in the water) I took several photos of the dark spots went home and airplayed the photos on the TV in the living room. The wind was blowing from the SE that day and the waves and the USO's were showing up along the riprap at the NW corner (immediately North of the spawning area). I was able to zoom in on these black specs and to my inexperienced eyes thought I could make out double dots (eyes) and faint outlines of body shapes of small fish. I suspected these were larval fish that had just hatched. They were not swimming, just seemed to be drifting with the water and waves. Whatever they were, they were tiny.

In the following days my wife and I would spend some time at the feeder and walk the edges of the pond (mostly along the riprap edges of the shallows and along the North side of the pond). What we could see at the feeder was a small flash almost like glitter in the water catching the light. There one moment and gone the next. I found that if I got close to the pond edge, kneeled down and remained still while focusing on the water I could see these little flashes were actually baby fish maybe 1/8 - 1/4" long. The flashes were sunlight reflecting off the sides of the babies.

Now the hunt was on! I showed my wife this and the two of us sat there mesmerized by these little swimmers. No idea what species they were but we did confirm that they were indeed there. As we walked the pond edge we could see various ages of these little fish. Some were a little more advanced and some were in a small school not really swimming but hovering next to some adjacent structure (riprap, weeds, and boat) All of them were in really shallow water. Almost all of them were invisible until we stopped moving and really focused on the water. It was almost like looking about one of the prints where you look at it for a time and then the image would reveal itself.

We do still see these little nearly invisible newly hatched fish along with schools of 1,000's of varying sizes of more advanced fry. I'm sure there are various fish in the new spawns as we are now seeing different body shapes in the water.

Look close to your structure/habitat that is right at the pond edge. I wish I had a picture or a video to share but trying to take a photo of a needle in the water is just not possible with my current equipment. My understanding of GSH spawn is that they are "almost needlelike" in the water.

I caught a small bass on video trying to eat a shiner about 1/2 its size.