How is this even possible? I don’t know a lot about forage spawning and growth but something seems off. Southern KS. I don’t think we had a really cold and harsh winter, the pond thawed out 2 days ago and I saw schools of these little fish swimming around that just looked different. I would have thought last years final spawn of CNBG would be a little bigger than this. To me, these look more like something you would see in the summer and fall, not this time of year. These have to be at least 5 months old . What am I missing
I don't think you are missing anything.. Late hatch, cooler temps, lower available plankton densities. Really not uncommon to see them that size, they just ran into lower water temps, lower metabolism which resulted in slow to near absent growth going into late fall.
