Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Bluegill & Fathead Only pond...right now.

My neighbor, Lee, filled a new 1/5 to 1/6 acre pond, 8' max depth, artesian spring fed with run off around July 2021.

Over the late summer of 2021, we put in about 12 dozen fatheads from a local bait shop, and from August to September '21, we put in (50) mature bluegill and redear sunfish from my neighborhood pond. In January of 2022, we saw fathead fry in the pond.

In Spring 2022, April time frame, we put in 20 lbs of fatheads. In May, we put in an additional (35) mature bluegill or redear.

The original plan was to stock SMB, YP, HSB, and some CC this Fall '22.

The pond is way, way loaded with fatheads of most all sizes. If you watch a patch of water, and don't think you see anything, you'll eventually see newly born fathead fry. It's crazy, and it's scared me a bit without real predators in the pond yet.

So, my question is, how much does an adult bluegill or readear eat fatheads of all sizes? I'm just trying to calm myself by thinking these (85) bluegill are helping thin the fathead population. I will often see the bluegill just suspending in a cloud of fathead frye just seeming to inhale.

Last Wednesday, we were able to stock (11) SMB in the 2" range. We started to pursue options for a summer stocking to get some predators in the pond. Probably going to get some YP, HSB, and CC in the next week to 10 days. Just moving up the schedule.

My trophy lepomis pond is male only sunfish species (csbg, res) and hybrids (hbg, bres) with forage species of fhm, pk shrimp, crayfish and supplemental optimal bg and lmb pellets. .25 ac pond with about 100 fish ranging from 9-12”. All forage is abundant, stocked 10 smb to try and manage the crays plus I run 20 cray traps March - November. I’ve witnessed bg slurp dozens of juvenile fhm just hovering in the shadow of the shoreline riprap. This doesn’t serve as any advice for you, Sunil - but just wanted to share my experience with the family as it’s kinda related. I have 9 ponds and this is my far my favorite to manage. I plan on adding gams and bmn just for fun this fall. Goal is for every fish caught to exceed 10” and average 120+ wr.

TJ, my original question was asked to give me some peace of mind that I'm not going to have some kind of massive overload of biomass from all the fatheads reproducing before predators get added in.

So, it's good to hear that these (85) BG/RES may be doing some population control.

We are also feeding Optimal Bluegill, and the BG/RES don't feed that aggressively...maybe because they are stuffed!!!

Leaving to get the YP and CC shortly.

A few updates on this pond:

1) Around late Oct/early November 2022, I got about (30) 4-6" SMB from Fenders Fish Farm and put them in this pond. We did not see any mortality from this batch.

2) About 2 weeks ago, I stocked (10) HSB in the 8-10" range in this pond. Of those 10, they had 4 floaters.

The pond owners son is a merciless fish trapper, and he's now catching baby bluegill from less than 1" to about 3-4" in size, and Yellow Perch of various sizes with the largest one trapped being maybe 8" long.

When throwing out the Optimal Bluegill Feed (long cylindrical ones), you'll see tons of fatheads hitting it, and now bigger boils. Some of those bigger boils are from bluegill, but they are hitting it so fast that you can barely see what kind of fish it is. There are other fish hitting the feed, or hitting fatheads who are feeding, but I can't tell what kind of fish.

Water clarity is less than 8", so it's hard.

Pond is still polluted with fatheads.

Waiting to see any SMB, HSB, or CC.

Pond owners did send off for a water test, and all parameters looked within acceptable range.

May have them do a jar test to see if we can assist with water clarity.

I fished Lee's pond yesterday.

Caught (2) HSB in the 8-10" range. The first one, I believe was stocked in Spring '22, and the second one was from a stocking a few weeks ago.

Also caught several Yellow Perch and a few mature bluegill.

Some mysteries getting solved.

No sign yet of SMB or Channel Cats, but I think they're in there...

Lee and his wife are feeding Optimal, so eventually this pond will turn into a sim-world type thing, and we'll have to see how the YP end up spawning.

We have not had a YP spawn as far as I can tell right now.

There has been a BG spawn, so hopefully the HSB, SMB, YP, and CC eat on BG frye and YOY.

Fished Lee's pond for a while yesterday. Caught several yellow perch and......................our first Smallie!!!!!

It hit a 1.5" bluegill on a hook and bobber!!!

The smallie was about 7" long and looked healthy, but not overly plump. I stocked SMB from (3) sources, so I can't tell which batch this smallie was from thus I really don't know the growth rate.

Lee's wife, Jackie, caught a 9-10" CC today, so as of this afternoon, all species stocked have been caught!!!

I am overjoyed to report that Lee's pond had a SMB spawn this spring!! On Saturday, I saw several YOY SMB!!

I'm actually quite surprised by this, but when another PB member posted about getting some SMB from Fenders Fish Farm last fall and then having a SMB spawn this spring '23, it made me wonder as I also got some SMB there last fall.

I've only seen the one more 'mature' SMB that Lee caught a few weeks ago.

All good, I'm not in any despair about it. I think the amount of dead floaters are in this thread somewhere, but going off memory, maybe 30 adult Bluegill and 4 SMB from a stocking of 11 or so SMB (in that specific stocking of SMB; there are more stocked at other times). Earlier this year we also had about 4 dead HSB a few days after stocking; these fish were 8-9" and I think they were just too stressed. Of course, the floaters are a subset of the morts, probably.

On a better note, Lee and his wife are getting their son one of those underwater green lights for Christmas. I'm probably more excited about that then any of them!