I picked up 50 1.5"-3" RES yesterday at NEMO Fisheries.

After I got home with them I put them in a 2' diameter x 2' tall mesh cage. I want to make sure there aren't any
accidental BG in the pond, so I decided to cage them for awhile to let them recover from the stress of transport,
and I can inspect them later to make sure they're all RES before releasing them into the pond.

Then it occurred to me that if I keep them in the cage for a month or two maybe I can get them started on pellets.

The acquisition of these fish was a spur of the moment thing, so I find myself with fish, but no proper fish food.
I'll order a bag of Optimal today, but until it arrives I need something to feed them.

I'm thinking minced shrimp or catfish bellies or whatever other kind of fish I can pick up at the grocery today.

I've read several threads on training RES, and have a rudimentary understanding of what has been done by others
to get them started. I just want to do my best to keep them in good shape until the pellets arrive.

Am I on track with my thinking here?

Augie, good thinking on trying to pellet train those RES. Until the Optimal arrives, offer them anything and everything you can get your hands on-yes, minced shrimp and fish, red wigglers, minced earthworms or nightcrawlers, mealworms, aquarium tropical fish food, crumbled moistened cat food, etc.

Do you have any other pellet feeding fish in the pond that you could catch and place in the cage to show the RES what It's all about? I put several fingerling GSF in an aquarium last year. They wouldn't eat anything for a couple of weeks. It seemed they were going to shrink down to nothing and starve. I added feeder goldfish who encouraged the greenies to try pellets, etc. Now they're all voraciously gobbling feed.

If you have vegetation in the pond that has snails crawling it, pull up some plants and stick some sprigs of that in the cage. You might put something solid on the bottom of the cage, such as plastic or metal, that would stop the food from falling through the mesh. This would give the fish more time to inspect the particles as they lay on the cage "bottom".

Remember, RES are low light feeders, so shade over the cage may help.

I'm probably reinventing a wheel that is already spinning, but these are some of my random thoughts.

Good luck.

Aside from the forage minnows that went in last month these baby RES are the only fish in the pond.
I've been tossing a cup of catfish food every evening and the minnows have been cleaning it up.
I suppose I could catch a couple dozen and toss in the cage with the RES. Can't imagine it would hurt anything to try it anyway.

Right now the cage is sitting on the bottom of the pond, so whatever I toss in will settle where they can get to it.

I didn't even think about worms/nightcrawlers. Those are easy to come by and don't cost anything but the time to turn a few shovels full of dirt in my garden.

I wonder what the wife will say if she catches me squishing crawlers through her garlic press?

That's just too funny imagining your getting busted using the garlic press.

Maybe the scale of the task requires the NutriBullet blender or the Ninja food processor. Either may be quicker to clean, hiding the evidence.

I'm wondering where this ends up...

I bet a garlic press would make short work of a popcorn shrimp.
Think I'll buy one of my own.

Better safe than sorry. lol

I do like your idea of putting a tray in the bottom of the cage. I'll do that when I move the cage.

Plan is to hang the cage off the dock, but I need to build another 8' section of walkway before I pin the dock to the pond bottom.
I've got the lumber/fasteners/pipe for mud poles, etc. Waiting on the brown santa truck to bring another float.
It won't take long at all to finish the dock once the float arrives.

I had buy a cheap ($10) blender to convert my Black Soldier Larvae into meal. There was no way in h#@* the wife was gonna let me use the bullet!

why turn it into meal? To feed the other larva or do fish not eat the larvae unless they are ground up?

Frozen bloodworms from the pet store, thaw them in water, feed in the shade.

The bigger fish eat the whole larvae. But the feed I'm throwing,AM400, is too big for the fry and YOY, so I grind some up into meal and pour it out on the water. The minnows and small fish make the water shimmer as they suck the particles off the surface.

The Optimal shipped today, but there may not be any left alive by the time it gets here.

Two floaters in the cage yesterday. Five more floaters today.

Pulled it up to see if there were any sinkers and a couple of what's left look rather lethargic. And there's only 32 in there. 7+32 doesn't equal 50 if my math is right.

They were nice and frisky when I picked them up. By the time I got home none of them looked very happy, so I only gave the bag about a 15 minute float because it was obvious they were suffocating and I wanted to get them into the water before they croaked.

$35 worth of fish isn't really a big deal, but it is a bit disappointing that they didn't make it here in better shape.

I'll call the hatchery tomorrow and see what they say.

Oh, I chopped up a couple nightcrawlers and tossed in yesterday evening, and again today. As many minnow fry as there are swimming around they'd probably be fine without being fed.

So I'll keep an eye on them and see what happens, but I'm not terribly optimistic about how it's going to go with this batch.

Some threads you might be interested in.

What do baby RES eat?

Pellet training RES

Update and release of pellet trained RES

RES info and links to old threads

Thanks for the links. Much to learn...

One dead RES yesterday, no more dead ones today. The 30-ish that are left seem quite healthy.

I moved the cage next to the dock yesterday.

Been feeding chopped up nightcrawlers because that's what I had on hand.

Optimal arrived today. Mixed a couple tablespoons of that with the chopped crawlers that I fed this evening.

Noticed that a few tadpoles and some sort of water bugs had made their way into the cage. There wasn't much left of them. All of the small bits were gone.

So it looks like the 30-ish RES that are still in there are little savages and probably will do fine from here on out.

I'll continue to monitor and report.

Two more dead RES since last post.

They like minced bluegill and nightcrawler.
The most aggressive feeders will come to the top of the cage and fight over that stuff.
They mostly spit the Optimal pellets.

Experiment continues...

Keep up your feed training, some will transition to pellets but it takes time. I like your addition of minced BG - you're doing everything right, keep on it.

I find hydrated feed is far easier to train fish with - can transition to dry floating feed later once they are on the hydrated. When I feed my caged fish daily I start with dry, floating feed until they won't take anymore, then I switch to hydrated feed and they will consume 4-5x more than dry float feeding. Pretty amazing how much more they can fit into their bellies.

I was losing several caged BRES and HBG I purchased in May - fungus developing in areas where they had lost scales or had minor injuries due to rough handling from hatchery. Lusk taught me many years ago to combat bacterial infections by feeding medicated pellets. I use antibiotic designed for fowl, cattle, horses or hogs either liquid or powder form and mix it with hydrated feed. After a couple days feeding the morts dropped from 10+ daily to 1-2, and after 3 days of treatment I didn't lose another fish. Continued antibiotic hydrated feedings for 14 days, and all surviving fish are eating well and demonstrate no lingering effects of the infection.

What a difference a day makes.

The pellets that I'd mixed in with the minced BG/crawler were quite mushy this evening. Rejection rate went from almost 100% to virtually zero.

A solid dozen of them came to the top when I opened the cage. They just hung there and stared at me. When I started dropping in little globs they were quite competitive in their feeding, and a few more swam up from the bottom and joined in the feast.

Several of them would take the feed from my hand.

I fed until they lost interest. I'm going to miss three days this coming weekend so I'll give them all they want until then.

Mixing some meat in with the pellets was key, I think. I'll continue that next week, then gradually transition to pellets alone, then starting working in the dry pellets. Maybe feed some minced fish/crawlers out of hand every few days just to entertain myself. lol

I don't really want to turn these fish into pets because I intend to eventually catch some of them and eat them, but it is a hoot when they swim up and take it out of my hand.

Your mention of feeding antibiotic sparked a memory. Many years ago when I was #1 bait catcher for my Grampa Wilkie, he always added a couple or three tablespoons of tetracycline powder to the water in the bait tank after we'd been out seining. I expect that I can get my hands on some of that easy enough. It might not help with this batch, but I'll be getting more fish this fall. It would be good to have some on hand if I need it.

Based on what I've observed with these little guys I'm thinking I'll build a couple more cages for the YP and SMB that are coming in the fall.

Thanks again for the advice. It's much appreciated.

Couldn't put my hands on any tetracycline today, but I got some antibiotic stuff at the local aquarium store that will have to do for now. The guy that runs the place was a bit intrigued by what I'm doing.

I didn't sample the medicine, but it must not taste so good. The fish didn't seem quite as enthusiastic about eating as they were yesterday. I picked up a small bag of frozen bloodworms while I was there. They aren't crazy about those either. Not a big enough bite maybe?

I'm out of the minced bluegill, but I've got a couple skipjack in the freezer. I'll chop a piece of that up and see how they like it tomorrow.

RES like subdued light. Might consider some shade for them.

The aquarium store medicine is working. Visible reduction in fin fungus. Taking well to hydrated Optimal.

There are ~15 left of the "50" that I bought.

They are savages. I'm glad they don't have teeth.

I’m glad to hear it buddy - that treatment has saved my fish twice now. I might just employ it anytime I cage new fish.

The little savages were happy to see me yesterday after my long weekend in sunny Iowa.

They are readily taking the hydrated Optimal. They prefer it stuck to a piece of fish or crawler, but at this point they will take pellets alone, won't spit out a pellet until they're starting to get full, and they will come to the surface any time of the day to do it.

I'll get the name of the medication the aquarium store dude sold to me. It seems to be quite effective. I haven't pulled the cage for a close look, but I'm not noticing any fin fungus when the fish come up for chow.

I suggest using sun dried or freeze krill like you get from the pet store. You might also consider shading the pen as the RES are less inclined to feed at surface when light levels are high. Otherwise look into a sinking diet.

Great work Augie - that's a graduate level class you just aced! I lost a lot of fish due to transfer stress before I learned about the antibiotic treatment - you're way ahead of my curve. Congrats.

Your experience has me considering the impact of feeding medicated feed before seining my grow out pond and transferring fish to my large pond. Hmmmm......

The stuff I used from the aquarium store is called NeoPlex Marine and Freshwater Medication. It's a neomycine sulfate product. Powder form. It's labeled for addition to aquarium water - no mention of oral application, but under the circumstances I didn't see a downside to trying it.

I just mixed in an amount that "looked right" with a couple tablespoons of Optimal and some minced bluegill/crawler meat. Nothing scientific about how I did it, but it worked. It seems they don't particularly care for the taste of the medicine - if I put too much in the feed they would spit a lot of it - so I had to fiddle with the amount for the first couple days. After they got used to it I've increased the dose and they don't seem to be terribly put off by that.

I went from losing one or two a day and the rest of them with fin fungus to apparently healthy fish within a week. I can still see a bit of fungus on two of them, but it's less every day. They are eating like pigs and getting fat. I try to feed at least three times per day, and I drop it in until they stop taking it. They all look like tiny little footballs now.

This is a very small sample, but it has led me to decide that any new fish that come to my pond will 1) be caged for feed training, 2) receive medicated feed for two weeks post-arrival, 3) spend a few minutes in a tank of salted (Snipe walleye handling tip) AND medicated water before going into the cage in the pond, 4) when I travel to buy fish in the future they will come home in medicated water.

Aquarium store guy gave me a tip that I think will come in handy for training/medicating fish that tend to be bottom feeders - take whatever fish/bug/worm/pellet/medicine mix you're going use, spread in a very thin layer on a teflon cookie sheet, pour plain boiled gelatin over the top just enough to bond the food mix, refrigerate until cool. Then peel the congealed mixture from the pan, chop/shred to appropriate size, and feed it out. They will eat some of it on the drop, and the gelatin will keep what makes it to the bottom in coherent bits they can find and eat off the floor.

He said to guesstimate the amount that will be used in a week and make that much in one batch. Keep the mixture refrigerated. Only take out the amount required for a single feeding. When you run out just make another batch.

I plan to try this method for starting my YP when they come.

This will be my last update on this thread until the next batch of RES get here.

Yesterday I noticed there were four small panfish working at bedding on a gravel patch in about 2' of water. Curious, I thought, since the only panfish in my pond are the 50 RES that I bought and caged last month.

Then the dim bulb got a little brighter. Three days after I put the cage in I had it just sitting on the bottom of the pond. Daughter was out there playing with her Doberman that thinks it's a Lab. Dog blasted off into the pond, ran over the cage, and knocked it over onto its side.

A few days later when I moved the cage I discovered that the ~40 fish in the cage had turned into ~20 fish.

So a few of them escaped when the cage was tipped over.

Anyway, I figured that since the fish that were still in the cage were all now healthy, feeding on pellets with gusto, and taking food from my hand, I might as well turn them loose to join the escapees and maybe pull off a spawn before summer is over. So that's what I did.

It will be interesting to see if I'm able to observe any of them taking pellets now when I feed. There are so many minnows in the pond it looks like a shark attack when food hits the water.

I thought a follow-up to this wondering might be worthwhile.

I hand feed morning and evening most days.

At every feeding I see numerous RES taking pellets. They capitalize on the FHM and GSH coming to the feed and maraud those guys with abandon, but after the initial flurry, they stuff themselves with pellets. For the most part they wait until the pellets sink, but they will take a few from the surface as well.

The RES were put in almost 60 days ago, and grown from 1.5"-3" to 3"-6" in size.

Optimal Starter #3 is what I've been giving them, ~1 cup per feeding session.

So now that winter has come and gone it's time for an update.

The RES that were pellet trained last summer have not forgotten about Augie's Free Soup Kitchen.

They have for the most part moved away from the dock, and have taken up residence in the cedar tangle on the north side of the pond.

Most days they will come out for pellets pretty much doesn't matter what time. They show up the best towards evening when the sun has
moved behind the trees on the west side of the pond, but there's always a couple or three of them that will come out at high noon on a bluebird day.

I don't notice them marauding the minnows like they would last summer. In fact, they've become downright lazy. They just cruise real slow and
gobble pellets like PacMan. Then they stand on their heads and pick the pellets that got by them off of the bottom.

They definitely pulled off a spawn last summer. I'm catching a few inch and under sized ones in the torpedo trap. Those guys get tossed into a 2'x5'
1/2" mesh wire cage that I've tied to the dock. They're getting Optimal Starter #3 and mooshed bugs/worms/fish 2-3 times a day.

I've got half a dozen or so now that are too big to escape through the cage mesh. They have smaller friends that come and go. One day there might
be 20 when I lift the cage to check them, then just the six the next time I look, then ten or a dozen the next time.

Update...

Still catching small sunfish in the torpedo trap. Built a mini-B using 1/4" mesh this week. Throat opening is 3/4"x4". It is very effective dropped in ~4' water with no bait.

Sorted the fish I'd put in the big cage earlier. Had 14 that were straight up RES. 1.5"-3" sized. Put them back in the big cage for pellet training.

The BG/HBG went into the smaller cage. Those will be turned into food for the RES that are in the big cage.

Caught six more RES overnight and put them in the big cage.

Been catching PK shrimp in the torpedo trap every night. They get released back into the pond.

The RES that were pellet trained last year show up at the dock every evening.
I'm switching them from Optimal Starter #3 to Jr. Been hydrating the Jr. to make some of it sink. They are taking to it slowly, but they don't hoover it like they do the Starter.
There is so much natural forage available I don't think they're terribly hungry, but they will wipe out a pint of earthworms just as fast as I can toss them in.

I bought a $20 smoothie blender on Saturday. It almost works too well. A short pulse renders half a dozen 1.5"-3" bluegills into a couple tablespoons worth of paste.

I'm mixing that stuff with Starter #3 for the caged RES.

I think this is going to work out pretty well.

The RES that were pellet trained last year are still not crazy about the Jr. formula. Some of them take it with gusto, some of them take it then spit it out.

I mixed some bluegill paste with hydrated Jr. yesterday. No more spitting. So I'm going to do that for a couple weeks and see how it goes.
When all of them have stopped spitting the Jr. I'll start reducing the amount of paste mixed in.

I have been looking for something hand-operated that would dice or mince culled undesirables, not turn them into a smoothie, but more like 1/4" to 1/2" chunks. I don't know how well a standard hand crank meat grinder would work. It would probably cut it too fine and it might be hard to get whole fish crammed down far enough to allow the grinder to do it's job.

It sounds like your paste is fitting the bill, however!

I have heard several poeple saying, recently, that their fish are spitting the food out. I had fish aquariums for many years and kept some larger cichlids that would take in pellet food and immediately spit it out. This was food that they all ate on regular occasion or die...it was all they had. In some cases the pellet was too big for them to swallow, while other times the pellet was not soft enough for their liking. It was not a mater of them not liking the taste of the food, but more the physical condition. Just some old observations of mine that could apply to pond kept fish. I wonder if your BG paste is not softening up the pellets some making it more palatable? The flavor change could be the big difference too! IDK.

Mostly, I'm just trying to keep you from talking to yourself too much...LOL

I've been married for 29 years. I talk to myself a lot. It's safer than saying it out loud where somebody else might hear me. lol

Do a google search for #10 grinder plates. The 1/2" plate does a pretty coarse grind on beef or venison. I expect they would do the same with fish.
Depending on the size of the fish you might need to chunk it up for it to fit the grinder throat.
I've pondered pulling out my #22 electric grinder to grind up some carp for freezing into chum blocks.
The next time a bunch of those crazy silver carp jump into my boat I'll bring some home and try it.

I asked one of the RES why he kept spitting pellets. All he said was glub glub. I don't know what that means.

Update time.

I'm going to say that mixing pureed bluegill with the Jr. pellets was a success in getting the RES that were trained on Starter #3 last summer transitioned to eating the larger sized Jr. pellets.

I did that for a couple weeks and then spent another two weeks cutting back on the BG paste until I was feeding straight up dry Jr. pellets.

I've fed out the first bag of Jr. and have started on the 2nd bag.

Many of the RES in my pond will readily take pellets from the surface now, even at high noon on a bluebird day, but based purely on observation most of them still prefer to take a pellet that sinks.

I dropped in a little dart head jig with a black rubber thing on it this evening to see if I could pull one out for measurements, and found one that was willing to cooperate.

8.5", 6.70oz Nice, healthy-looking, stocky fish, and not even close to the biggest that I've seen.

Probably could have pulled a few of the better ones with a piece of nightcrawler, but I'm not wanting to make them hook-shy.



I have another 50 or so that I've trapped caged up and in training now. The first of them to go in the cage earlier in the summer are pushing 4" now, and are shining examples for the yoy that I've been trapping for the last 30 days or so. It doesn't take the little ones long to figure it out when there are a few in there to show them how it's done. I feed the Jr. pellets until the bigger ones start to lose interest, then toss in a pinch or two of the Starter #3 for the little guys.

Nice looking RES!

Didn't have the scale handy for this one, but it looks to be in decent condition.

Nice fatty!

At least decent.

Nice fish !!

Very nice.

Why do you want only RES and 0 Bluegill?

I can't answer for him but RES do not have near the propensity to over populate like bluegill do. So in certain situations they can provide forage for a predator species than might not fit will with BG

For example, I have one pond that I only keep SMB and RES in. I have not had a problem with the RES over populating. If I had BG in that pond by now they likely would be so thick the SMB would not be able to reproduce and I would have way too many small and stunted BG. The SMB with their smaller mouth and less aggressive piscivore predators would not be able to keep the BG population in check like LMB can.

So certain situations RES without the usual BG compliment work well.

Augie,

It this one of those you are feeding in the cage? I want to call those boards 2x6s. Am I close? Dandy fish.


Snrub,

I am curious as to how your RES finished growing out in your forage pond. What length did they get to?

They had a spawn and I have removed a few hundred fingerlings. The ones I have caught with a cast net a month ago were about 5". They looked healthy.

I need to get a bunch of the HSB out of there. But have been a combination of busy with other stuff this fall and lazy and have not removed any in the last month. They are up to about 10" now with some smaller ones. I have not been feeding them lately except when it warms up and sunny. When we had a cold rain with a lot of runoff they were off feed for a week. Kind of gave up feeding them. Then I fed them late afternoon yesterday and they tore it up. So it is sunny outside right now so will see if they eat today.

I would think the RES would be suffering in there with all the competition.

My pond is SMB/YP/HSB/RES. I have no LMB to control BG numbers.

We like to swim in the pond. BG are swimmer-nipping savages.



Yes, yes and yes. 5.75" nominal with ~.3875" gaps between boards.

That RES was stocked late June of '19 at ~2" in size. I think I had them caged for a month or so to get them started on pellets.
Once they figure it out there's no need to keep them locked up.


My HSB did the same thing after that cold snap that came through a few weeks back. They were in a funk for about a week, but have been eating well since.
I chopped up a bit of deer liver on Saturday and tossed it in mixed with a few pellets. It didn't last long at all.

Snrub - if you need help culling some HSB, please reach out as I would love to help. I have been wanting to get 25-50 for a personal aquaculture project I am working on. Maybe we could work up a deal...or I could just drive down and help. I'm fully willing and capable, and can throw a cast net correctly 50% of the time where the net opens 50%!

Augie,

Though you didn't weigh ... it I think it weighs ~ 1.2 lbs and maybe a bit more. Using the image pixel proportion of the fish and boards, I estimate the length of the that fish @ 9.8". At standard weight, that would be a 1.06 lb fish. But it just looks plumper than standard to me. I say 115 RW or greater, ergo, that fish weighs at least 1.2 lbs and a handsome fish it is.

2D images don't do justice to 3D objects. Plump is an understatement when describing this fish. Obese is closer to it.

I've got all of the stuff I need to do proper weights and measures. I just need to get it set up and organized in a way that makes it handy to use at the pond.

I really want to put a few of these toads in the skillet, but for now I'm having so much fun sizing them up I can't bring myself to kill any of them.

My pond has turned into a giant aquarium full of pet fish. lol

For Crying Out LOUD...that's a fat fish! Nicely done.

Now I am worried you took offense of my use of the word "plumper". To be sure I was conflicted with how much to increase its RW. RES are such robust fish to begin with and appear heavier to me in all waters I catch them relative to BG of the same lengths. This is also corroborated by the standard weights. At 10" the standard RES weighs 1.13 lbs where the standard BG weighs .91 lbs. So an RES is 24% plumper than BG even when standard. So this is where my experience falters ... I really don't know how to gauge RW from a photo other than that fish appears a good deal fatter than any RES I have ever caught. Also, I am not certain whether the RES I have caught were at or above standard weight so please don't take a offense if I underestimated the weight.

Offense? Heavens no. I do wish I had taken a top-down pic of this fish. I've never held a sunfish that was as thick from side to side as this one. It was built like a sumo wrestler. lol

Cool, because I was impressed with that fish. Very remarkable specimen indeed. Is this one you feed trained this year?

I'd like to think that fish was from the first batch of RES that I stocked as fingerlings late June of '19, so pellet trained July/Aug of '19, then released back into the pond.

Spring of '20 I started trapping and caging RES in late spring. Those would have been 2019 recruits. Every RES I trapped went into the cage.
Every 4 weeks or so I pulled the cage, caught out the fish that had obviously taken well to pellets and released them back into the pond.
The smaller fish stayed in the cage for more training.

I did that from mid-May until mid-September. When I pulled the cage for the last time I sent the runts to the bait pond and the pellet eaters went back into the cow pond.

I suppose that it's possible this fish could have come from the first batch that was pellet trained this year, but I'm thinking probably not.
Either way, it is a nice fish, and it's not the biggest one I've seen. It is the biggest one that I've caught.

I'm looking forward to what next year brings. I have a feeling I'll be seeing RES that are 12"+ by the end of the summer.

Augie - you have this RES pellet training thing figured out. Be real proud of that porker sized RES. I would like to see you write an article for PBoss magazine about your adventures of training and growing your style of pellet trained and raised RES; Lusk will help you get that done. Just contact him. It will be a good winter project for you two. I am going to forward this thread to him.

12" is certainly possible next year. They'll exceed 2lbs probably.

What did you catch that RES on?

How do you normally fish for them and how IYO do they bite relative to BG?

I see a lot of advantages to them. Up to now almost all I have caught have been on bait very close to bottom in cold weather. The coldest day of winter about 3 years ago didn't keep them from biting. Trying to get through the BG to them is a challenge in warm weather. I did happen to catch one a popper on an overcast day and it was a dandy. As long as the one in your photo ... though I am sure much older and definitely thinner but still robust. Was a very pleasant surprise when I finally was able to see what it was. I just sat there admiring it before letting it swim away. Do you ever fly fish for them?

Sorry about all the questions but I am giving some serious thought to RES and no BG when I finally dive into pond ownership.

Definitely interested in writing a story about this. Augie, pm me if interested.

Cody Note - Look for a Pond Boss magazine very good article about Augie's RES adventures in an upcoming PB issue.

I caught this one on a small dart head jig with a black soft plastic stick thing about 3/4" long. I've caught quite a few on a bead-head trout fly.
Earthworms/nightcrawlers work pretty good too.

I just drop the jig into the water off the edge of the dock, let it hit bottom, pick it up and wiggle it around real slow.
They usually smack it with a purpose. They will swallow a live worm really fast so I don't use those much in my pond.
In other waters, if I'm catching to keep, a worm under a slip float is hard to beat.
BG seem to be a bit more aggressive than RES. If they're schooled up together you'll usually have to catch a bunch of BG to catch a few RES.
That could be simply because BG tend to vastly outnumber RES in waters where they coexist.

I haven't tried the fly rod on them yet, but I do intend to give that a shot in the future.

Two days shy of two years since this fish was stocked.

Species Length Weight Standard W Relative W
RES 10.00 0.96 0.72 132.92%

I think I'm on the right track.

Nice work !!! They should be able to grow as well as BG (similar size ability).

Great work Augie! That is the same growth that we are seeing on BG that have been raised on Optimal, except the BG are a hair shorter but weigh the same because they are taller.

Wow that is a beautiful fish!

Anecdotal information follows...

I've been trapping and caging a few baby RES this summer. The weather in May was cold and nasty, which delayed startup this time.
Weather in June was absolutely stupid. Went from hot and dry to monsoon. 17.5" measured rainfall here over 11 days. Anyway...

The RES I've been trapping are running 2.5"-3.5" size on average, so assumption is they are from last summer's hatch. Knowing how
difficult it is getting them started on pellets I decided to try something new with the first batch this summer. I learned last summer that new
additions would get the hang of eating pellets quicker if there were already a few pellet eaters in the cage.

So... when I caged the first half a dozen RES this time I threw one 3" BG in the cage with them. I mixed up a batch of shredded
BG/nightcrawler/Optimal #3 and started them on that. I also have been making a point of tossing the small round Jr. pellets into the cage
when I feed the pond. I do that before I feed the shred fish mixture. This batch of RES has acclimated to pellets quicker than any I've
trained previously. Three weeks in there is a good number of them that will take dry Jr. pellets at any time of the day. Cloudy or sunny
doesn't much matter. When I toss pellets into the cage they attack them with vigor. Are all of the RES in the cage eating dry Jr. pellets?
Definitely not. They haven't all been in there for the same length of time, so I continue to feed a portion of shred mix at least every 2nd day.

I think I've got two factors working that help to explain this behavior. One, once caged with that aggressive little BG, the RES observed the
BG feeding on pellets and the old monkey see, monkey do game was on. Two, these RES have been swimming in a pond that now holds
several generations of pellet trained fish, and gets pellets at least twice a day. I believe that half, if not more, of the RES in the cage had
learned to eat pellets in the pond prior to being trapped and caged. I make a mental note of the condition of each fish that goes into the cage.
Roughly half of the RES that I trap look like a typical young sunfish - not fat, not skinny, just young. The other half have fat little bellies and
are noticeably thicker across their backs than your garden variety YoY sunfish.

In another week or two I'll pull the cage and bucket the fish for inspection. The fish that have buddha bellies will be released into the pond.
The rest of them will go back into the cage for further training. This cycle will repeat several times before cool weather arrives and they all
are released into the pond for the winter.

I ran a seine net Saturday evening, lots of YOY RES right around 3/4", got 50 plus on one pass. My RES were on beds late May/early June.

awesome read... My pond is just getting going and this gives me something to grow towards.

Very nice. I expect to see YOY showing up in the traps by the end of July. I caught a few of those last year and caged them up for training,
but it didn't go too well. They can't compete with the bigger fish in the cage. The 3"-4" fish pick on the little guys unmercifully. I'd say less
than half of the YOY that I caged survived the experience. This time I'll build another 2'x2' round cage and put the small fry in that.

Another bit of anecdotal information regarding the current crop of caged RES...

A week ago I dispatched a nuisance racoon. After I finished butchering the varmint I pulled the liver and pancreas out of the offal
and chopped it up into itty-bitty pieces with a filet knife. Mixed it up with ~1 cup Optimal Starter #3.

You would think the stuff is caviar. I toss the small round pellets from Optimal Jr. -dry- into the cage until they stop taking them. I've
found that they will eat much more of it if I toss one or two at a time rather than 20 or 30. After they've eaten their fill of those I drop
in bits of the coon liver, which worked to very nicely hydrate the Starter #3 pellets, one piece at time. They fight over it. Observed
rejection of the pellets is virtually zero.

The first of this batch to be caged have been in there for about a month now. Earlier today I pulled the cage to get a visual on how
they are doing. The best of them look like little footballs. Some of them look like they haven't eaten in weeks. This is consistent
with my previous observations.

I think it's time that I built another cage so that I can separate the aggressive feeders from those that are on the timid side. I want
to find out if the wallflowers will bloom after the bullies are moved out.

A great experiment !

RES have this weird dominancy hierarchy, that dynamic will definitely change when you separate them out.

All of the common sunfish (including the basses) have this behavior trait. BG have the most strange species history traits of all the sunfish. If interested see the book on BG and/or look at the Bryan D Neff. articles.

Shorty, your prediction was 100% accurate.

I moved the largest six RES to a different cage. It took three or four days for the fish in both cages to get over the ruckus.

Once they came out of their funk, fish that had been middling feeders prior to removal of the most aggressive six, immediately
filled the power vacuum that was created.

The exercise is just about finished for this year. We're taking a couple weeks vacation starting next week and won't be around
to feed, so they will all be set free on Tuesday.

Side note - yesterday evening I spent some time tossing the Wehebe to catch some BG to use for catfish bait this weekend.

1st toss I came out with quite a nice RES. Phone was in the truck, so no pic, but I got no reason to make it up.

Species Length Weight Standard W Relative W
RES 10.50 1.18 0.84 140.48%

The RES that I've done weights and measures on this summer have ranged from 125%-180% relative weight.

Sounds like we need a new fish acronym for Augie's pond.

BFRES

(Big Fat Red Ear Sunfish)

BFRES I think so.

Of course that fish was a "hook swallower", it looks like he/she swallowed everything that fit into the mouth gape!

Hopefully there are plenty of similar siblings still in your pond.

This one is knocking on 12" and is back in the pond. The RES that swallowed the hook was ~8.5".

I expect that this fish is from the first batch that were stocked and pellet trained summer of '19.
There could be 20-25 close to this size in the pond, and as many as 50 in the 7.5"-9" size that were pellet trained summer of '20.

Getting these fish to this size early in the life of the pond wasn't terribly difficult. The challenge to come will be figuring out how
many, and of what size, to harvest. I'm already removing all <9" BG, and I'd like to think that the HSB are assisting with that task.

This old thread discusses carrying capacity, and while there's some debate over the numbers, 500lb/ac seems to be a reasonable
target for pond that is fed and aerated.

https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=201295&page=1

At 1/3ac, the target for my pond would be 167lbs. For the sake of discussion, let's say my 20 HSB are averaging 3lbs, 24 SMB at 1lb,
25 RES at 1.5lb, 50 RES at 0.5lb, 30 YP at 2lb, and 50 YP at 1lb.

That's 256.5lb, or 769.5lb/ac, and it doesn't consider the utterly unguessable number of BG, smaller RES, smaller YP, GSH, GAM, etc.,
but it wouldn't seem unreasonable to me for those fish to add another 100lbs to the total.

So it would seem that I may be pushing my luck on standing weight, and need to carefully consider harvest quotas for next season.
Maybe something like this...
5 HSB
25 YP 8"-12"
10 RES >10"
every BG captured that's <9"
That would amount to ~55lbs of HSB/YP/RES, and assuming the number of BG captured is similar to what I caught this season,
probably another 50lbs-ish there.

If I'm off base with my thinking I'd appreciate it if someone would straighten me out.

I think your thinking is correct, and it might be a little light. Remember fish grow the best when they have room to grow. If pushing the limits, I would make sure you have testing equipment to monitor ammonia/nitrite in the pond plus O2 levels when hot weather arrives. Test O2 levels before sunup when water temps are in the 80's and higher..

Augie,

What esshup said. I agree with both of you. I would only add that winter (though maybe not so much at your location) can enforce the limits of carrying capacity. Carrying capacity isn't always limited by food. IOW there may be plenty of food to bring the standing weight above the carrying capacity for winter. Under such conditions, there will be winter mortality (which can go entirely unnoticed) that pares the standing weight to the most limiting condition. If you suspect this may be so in your pond ... I would encourage you to do this. Consider harvesting the goal weight from now until the winter begins to ice for extended periods. If the condition prevails that winter is most limiting, if you delay harvest until spring ... you would be paring an already pruned population of fish. Just something to give some thought to.

^^^^ I believe that most ponds are limited in carrying capacity by chemical constraints (nitrification process) or by O2 levels, food usually isn't an issue in ponds that have enough nutrients in them, or ponds where artificial food is used. O2 levels can crash summer or winter.

We don't typically experience extended periods of ice here. 2-3 weeks in a bad winter. My pond has a high volume for its size thanks to the depth,
but I do intend to set a diffuser up shallow this winter, and run it 24/7 when air temps are below freezing, just to be on the safe side.

The bluegill wars will continue this fall, until the water cools to the point that I can no longer catch/trap/net them.
The HSB are so stinking expensive that I can't bring myself to start harvest of them until they size up a bit.
I want one more spawn out of the YP before I begin to harvest them.

Is there a particular field test kit/device that you could recommend for checking ammonia/nitrate levels, or is that something that
can only be done with a lab test? Either way, I should send a bottle of water to the TAMU lab asap so I know current state.

DO meter is already on the Christmas list.

Augie, a standard test kit for an aquarium will be fine.

The API Pond Master Test Kit is pretty handy to have, affordable, and should last a few years even with extraordinary frequent pond water testing. I use it and it tests for pH, ammonia, nitrite, and phosphate.

Outstanding! I appreciate all of the advice on this one.