Will HBG or RES eat them? I have thousands in my pond, I thought tonight that I had FHM spawn with a bunch of little minnows but on further exam. they were boatmans.

Good question. My opinion is "I think so", if you and I call the same bugs water boatmen.

I know I had a LOT more water insects in my pond the first year when the only fish were FHM & GSH; since the BG/RES/LMB/CC went in, sufarce/near surface insect numbers observed are less than 10% of what they were.

I have researched this a little bit more and have dicovered that trout and a few other fish will eat them but I havent found information that HBG or RES will eat them, I also found that they can take to the air and move from water to water if they feel need.

The water striders are the surface bugs which I use to call waterboatmans until my biology major father in law "edjamacated" me

Water striders I think I've got down pat. Four (IIRC) long legs that walk on top of the surface tension layer. In my terminology, water boatmen are the little oval bugs that zip around with no visible (at least not easily seen by the naked eye) means of propulsion, while oarsmen are a little bigger and have those horking long legs they "row" with.

If the water boatmen can fly, maybe the BG/RES make them nervous enough to fly off even if they don't eat them.

Link to the waterboatman
Now I need to read about a back swimmer both insects
Looks like I need to drag out the kids butterfly net and nab a few to properly id these creatures.
Was noted that if you have alot of these at the surface than you have little to no fish below, I wonder if they know that I planted 100 hbg and 50 res 2 weeks ago they are still small but hopefully growing fast.

I have estimated I have at least a thousand boatman on my new pond as it fills. They are a pest as they steal feed when I feed the fatheads.
They crowd in & disturb the surface so much I can't see the minows feeding.

I also have giant water bugs! They are wicked!

Just about any fish that can get a boatman in their mouth will eat them. Boatmen are fairly easy for fish to catch and eat if the fish is big enough. It may take a little larger fish to eat backswimmers since they they can bite/pierce. The smaller fish including minnows with larger mouths will readily eat all the forms of the immature stages of the boatmen (1/16"-1/4") and backswimmers. No doubt both are a good protein food source. See Bruce's excellent enhancement in the next post.

Read this thread.

http://www.pondboss.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=20;t=001972

It turned out to be a really informative piece of information. My water boatmen are the primary food source for the bluegill in my all male pond. Because there is no reproduction, there are no YOY fish to pressure the boatmen and they go wild. I kid you not...I have millions. I'm not exagerating either. If you go anywhere on the pond and drop a five gallon bucket you will get between 100 and 300 boatmen. Sometimes it looks like it is raining on my pond because the boatmen pop up to the surface, presumably to grab a little air so they can remain slightly bouyant (I'm guessing about this) and the bluegill gorge on them. I have kept a few bluegill and counted 175 boatmen, or more, in one fish. Definitely a good protein food source. They're kind of dumb and slow so I think they make easy pickings.

Well darn I should have done a search first, I should have known that this had already been dicussed to its fullest. I could catch any of the buggers today they were staying out too far for my reach.

Ric, how about those Giant Water Bugs? They are awesome aren't they. They will eat small fish and minnows. I have some of them too. Have you ever seen the larvae? They can be 3 or 4 inches long with large mandibles with which they kill and eat anything they can take on. I've seen them capture, kill and eat quite large leopard frogs.

Look out when picking up the Giants! I picked one up at the school bus stop when I was a kid and the darn think bit my thumb while I was giving him a look over. OUCH!

bz,
It's my first experience with the Giant Water Bugs. I had to research them to find out what in the heck they were.
I had caught a glimps of them a couple of times but figured what I saw was just a frog darting away under water. Then I got to watch one catch a tadpole.
It was too far away & with the glare I wasn't sure it was anything more than a dead leaf but it just didn't look like it should be there when suddenly it grabbed the tadpole!
I haven't seen any of the larva. But that's a big bug!

FT, I read they had a nasty bite. I bet it got your attention!

hi, this looks like an interesting book about insects, is new in 2006 and has a great title

http://www.amazon.com/Walk-around-Pond-Insects-Water/dp/0674022114

another link to A Walk Around the Pond

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/WALWAL.html?show=reviews