Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Skinny Yellow Perch

Was out at the pond yesterday and decided to throw a casting net to see how fish were growing. Bluegill were nice and healthy in all different sizes, plenty of FHM present, a few Bull Head but my trapping has seemed to control them. I got 2 Yellow Perch in the net. One was very young which is good it confirms this years spawn was successful. It was young but also sort of skinny.. The other YP was maybe in the neighborhood of 7"-8" in length but it was very skinny.

Later that evening I casted out my fishing rod and landed a very nice and plump HSB so that tells me they are eating well.


In the Spring I caught maybe a half dozen YP and they were not that skinny but none of them were plump and well rounded. Is this something to be concerned about or could this just be a runt?

I have not done any pellet feeding to the YP but maybe I need to start.. We have 2 other ponds with YP and have never pellet fed. All of those YP are very fat looking.

In my experience YP do not eat small BG very well until the YP get to 7"-8" sizes. As Snipe says small YP can prey heavily on small FHM (0.7"-1.2"). YP smaller than 6" eat primarily invertebrates and compete with BG for the invertebrates that in a crowded BG population inverts will be sparse. Use the info from TJ and Snipe as good advice. Turbid water and high numbers of smaller BG that eat similar foods will slow the growth of smaller YP.

After re-reading this thread about your pond conditions of murky water, bullheads, abundant BG and probably lots of 2019 small bullheads may not be adequate for growing YP. Are your YP still as thin as your pictures of them in the end of Sept 2019? Catch several and verify.

Lots of bullheads have made their way in due to their prolific recruitment with the lack of adequate predation of all BH sizes less than 6" long. BH are not getting eaten by HSB because BH are primarily a bottom oriented fish and HSB are an open water oriented fish thus they are not in frequent association / interaction. LMB are a more bottom, shallow, and structure oriented predator where BH like to 'hang out'.

BG could be crowding out the YP for pellets which forces pellet trained YP to forage on natural foods. I've seen pellet dependent YP get unusually skinny when not getting pellets and with a pond full of small minnows. 'Unusually skinny' with big heads and thin concave bodies is the way your fish appear.
I don't think adding FHM this spring will help your situation because the HSB and BH will likely get most of the FHM. Plus IMO a big percentage of the pellet trained YP are not very good fish predators.

Since your current fishery is struggling, I think your best plan to most quickly salvage your fishery and going forward toward a more balanced fishery is resort to adding LMB to control BG and BH. I would not add fingerling LMB because for their best survival rate you want them to immediately start eating the abundance of small fish 1.5"-3" which means 6"-8" bass. I would over stock bass numbers (80-100/ac) and later thin them out as needed. If you use larger sized stocker bass you might get success with 50-80/ac, but it will take longer to achieve prey - predator balance and rapidly growing fish.

Overabundant bass results in producing large BG and BH. Many of the 2019 crop of BH should be 2.5"-3.5" plus you also have the 2019 crop of small BG. For the first year or two you may have to make a concerted effort to help the LMB reduce the high numbers of small fish so this small fishes group will not grow into the 4"-6" size range and overpopulate the pond = food shortages.