In my small pond I love bluegill. Today I was fishing (local BOW not my pond) and was catching good sized red ear sunfish. I tossed them back and figured I do not want them in my pond since they have a chance to hybridize with bluegill and I do not want any hybrids.

I don’t mind species diversity but am I over reacting here? Do they hybridize if they have the same species to breed with? I have zero snails.

Any opinions on putting them in or keeping them out?
Thanks

I like red ears both as insurance against snails and diversity. Not many issues with crossbreeding at my place, though I'm sure it happens occasionally. Red ears feed in a somewhat different niche than bluegill so generally they complement rather than compete with each other.

One big difference: BG and CNBG take to fish food pellets rapidly. RES don't.

Unfortunately my pond is so small I think hybrids would be more likely( Around 1/4 acre) If I had a few acres of water I wouldn’t even be concerned since they can easily find their own niche habitats in a larger body of water.



Our bluegill love the Aquamax they’ll even nip you swimming if you don’t feed them first. Kids love them.

If you put RES in your small pond with BG I am pretty positive that you will get some hybrids also known as specklebelly sunfish. If you keep the population small and focus on harvesting female BG plan on getting some 2 pound maybe 3 pound bluegills since you are in FL with long growing seasons.

Watch out for those possible BGxRES crosses.

I had a few in my forage pond where supposedly only RES and FHM were stocked. Well somewhere in the mix (I suspect my source of RES stock at time of stocking) had some GSF mixed in. I had lots of RES/GSF hybrids produced in that forage pond.

In my SMB pond I have stocked only RES, SMB, FHM (gone) and a few GSH until last year when I put in some of the HSB I raised more recently in my forage pond (thanks again to the guys and gal PBF members who helped me sein and transfer the HSB!). I have also caught a few RESxGSF hybrids in this pond (they take to feed well and are relatively easy to catch compared to pure RES). I had transferred a lot of recruitmnet from my forage pond to stock it and likely misidentified a few RES/GSF hybrids for pure RES. I always remove any ot those I catch. They have grown well at least!

Thinking maybe the two bass components might need more forage than what the SMB provide (they spawn like crazy and produce SMB fingerlings every year) I caught a beautiful 1-1.5# male copernose BG out of my main pond and transfered him to the RES/SMB pond, Thinking that one male CNBG might just nest and would probably produce some CNBG/RES hybrids for forage and a little easier catching (I need Shorty to come down and teach me how to catch RES!!!).

So I have bastardized my RES/SMB "only" pond but hey, for me it is all about learning and experimentation anyway. I'm not much of an angler as the only fishing I have done for years is my own ponds. I will leave a link to my RES pond if anyone is bored enough to want to look at the old thread.

https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=459159

Thanks for the update. Those are very helpful for readers.

Here is one I caught today sure are nice fish

Very nice RES!

I'd definitely bucket stock RES like that.