I have 6 dozen RES from last year's spawn that I am pellet training out in my shop. I think that if things continue as they have I will end up with 70-80% of them eating pellets off the surface of the tank in the next month. Right now that is how many I have that are currently eating slow sinking pellets. I do have a handful of RES that never come to the surface but have become great tank cleaners sucking pellets off the bottom of the tank.

The turning point seems to have occurred last week, just by happenstance I went to check on my fish several hours after feeding them and decided to drop a small number (5-10 pellets) in the tank with my 50+ larger RES and they seemed to get mildly competitive with the small amount of food that was introduced. I would wait a minute or two and repeat with another small amout of food. They are extremely competitive with blood worms and nightcrawlers but have not been so with pellets. To me it looked like they were eating the pellets simply to keep the fish next to them from getting the pellet when only a small number of pellets were put in the tank, prior to this it was pretty common to watch them suck in a pellet and take turns spitting it out. I started doing this routine every night and now even one I thought was going to starve himself has started eating pellets.

The funny thing is now when I stand next to the tank most of they come up to the surface and stare at me me expecting to be fed.

There are probably some other factors at play as well.

Great update Shorty! That's a cool project and looks like they're taking to it very well.

That's one chunky looking RES!

There are much chunkier ones.

I did a random net sample last night and six of the seven RES I pulled out of the tank were chunky with just one average looking RES and one super chunky 2" RES.

My wife took picures last night while I put them back in the tank one by one but most of the pictures were a little blurry. The picture I posted was one of the less blurry ones.

What kind of tank setup are you using? How big and how many RES are you keeping in it?

I have 55 (estimate) RES in the 2-3"+ size range in a 300 gallon fiberglass aqualculture tank and another 16 RES in the 3/4" to 1-3/4" size range in another 75 gallon aquaculture tank.

My RES spawned for the first time last year and I suspect the larger fish I am pellet trainning are simply larger because they are less picky and more aggressive eaters than the smaller fish that I have from last years spawn. I think this is one of the reasons I have such a high percentage of them eating pellets.

Nice work Shorty. Post a timeline with what you did/fed etc . RES can be pellet trained and this is more proof of that.

It's a strange timeline of events that started at the end of May with my wife and I salvaging RES out of our pasture after heavy rains that washed them and thousands of BF tadpoles out of the pond. 28 larger RES and 40 smaller RES were initially salvaged over several days. Since then they were graded by size and put in two different tanks. I have traded the smaller ones away for a variety of small pellets to try out and have added some additional larger RES from seining on two different occasions a few weeks apart. Adding more RES to my bigger tank without increasing the amount of bloodworms they were fed kind of forced them to start eating pellets or go hungry, it also made them more food competitive.

Here is what they have been fed, I started with frozen bloodworms and mini slow sinking cichlid pellets that I picked up at the pet store. At first very few of them would eat pellets, mostly they took turns sucking them in and spitting them out until they hit the bottom of the tank. After trading the smaller RES away I started using AM300 which they like much better than the pet store pellets even though they are the same size. I am also grinding AM500 in a coffee bean grinder and sorting out the larger chunks and now mixing it in with the bloodworms they get. I have been slowly decreasing the amount of bloodworms they get daily and increasing the pellet chunks in their twice a day bloodworm treat. I started giving them sliced up night crawlers two weeks ago in part to get the super agressive eaters something in their stomach so the less agreesive eaters had more of chance to eat some of the bloodworms and pellets, it seems to have worked.

I also have 16 smaller RES from my last seining two weeks ago that are getting micro pellets and the smaller coffee bean ground stuff. They seem to eat the ground stuff better than the micro pellets even though the micro pellets are higher in protein.

Shorty -- I sure hope it works. As I recall, Theo Gallus was successful in getting his to eat pellets. I believe you were an active forum member when he was doing it. Somewhere here on the site there is probably a thread about how he did it -- but as I recall,it wasn't that different from what you've been doing.

I tried it in a cage a number of years ago. Feeding redworms, dehydrated krill, ground feed pellets, etc. It worked for several weeks, then something happened. It is long enough ago that I don't remember exactly what happened. I just remember a bunch of them died, so I let the remainder go into the pond. I believe I have a reasonable population of RES in that pond, but I'd sure like to have a lot more. I probably catch less than five a year, and they go right back in. I see them spawning each spring, so something is happening.

Good luck. Keep us posted. I'd still like to try again.

Ken

I must of missed Theo's thread on pellet training RES, I will have to see if I can find it. My wife is pretty sure she saw a 5" RES eating pellets the other night at the pond when she was feeding my fish for me .

Here are few better pictures of some of the fish that are that are taking my pellet training class.

Male?


Female?

I sent Theo a couple studies on feed training RES and away he went.

See these

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=135916&page=1

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=131530&page=1


http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Board=8&Number=113255&page=1

Thanks Eric! Those are good reads, especially the second one!

I am doing pretty much the exact same thing with LMB, RES and crappie.

The LMB and res started at ~2" but i was only able to find 3" hyrbid crappie.

The LMB are completely feed trained. The RES are quazi feed trained in that they eat pellets but most will only take a pellet after it starts to sink and it is better if they are already softened by soaking.

The crappie still only eat blood worms. I cannot even get them to try saturated/sinking freeze dried krill.

I have 6 crappie in a 60 gallon aquarium. I added 2 of the closer to feed trained RES and 1 completely feed trained LMB to the same tank to help with competition but hopefully not introduce too much competition.

next year i am going to work very hard to find smaller crappie to work with, after reading other threads on feed training on this forum and my own limited experience it seems like it is a lot easier to feed train under 2" sized fingerlings than full grown fish. Remember fry eat zooplankton and such that is floating around in the water until they get big enough to eat snails, insects, crustaceans or smaller fish. It seems logical they would take to pellets/crumbles easier at this stage since they are already used to eat food that doesnt move very much.


Brian

Now the third link works.

Please keep us posted with your results.

In my older/lower pond, besides the bluegill (which are the majority), I have a limited number of LMB and black crappie that come up for pellets, along with my white catfish, channel catfish, grass carp, and my buddy Koi George -- a morbidly obese orange and black koi.

But, I never see the RES. I catch a few each season, and I see monstrous RES spawning each May. I just don't know what happens to them after that, or how many may be in the pond.

LOL, I rarely see my RES either and they should be the majority of fish that I have other than GSH. I suspect that without BG or LMB present I will have some RES that start taking pellets in the pond as I have very few snails left in the pond now. I suspect that my RES are primarily eating GSH fry/fingerlings which are the most abundant type of forage in the pond. Pellets should be much easier to chase down.

My RES have just started taking pellets in the last couple weeks. I had to go to them though. They would not come to the usual feeding areas. I found 2 areas where they were located. At first, they were pretty hesitant, but now they come readily to feed. Their feeding habits are also quite different from the HBG, which attack the food w/fury. The RES casually slurp it from the surface. They also swim in an undulating, porpoise fashion, taking one pellet after another until full.

Brook, if it is something RES really like to eat they will eat stuff with fury and hit stuff on the surface hard.

I don't know how many times my fingers have gotten nipped in the last month.

I believe you. I do see some competitive feeding among them, and I've felt that jar and hard run when fishing for them. On a side note, I'm assuming they have fattened up on my snails. I had loads of small, black snails that covered my pallets this spring. Maybe they've relocated, but I haven't seen a snail now for a couple month.

I have started seeing a little bit of that type of pellet eating behavior in my pond over the last few days with AM500, I think they might be RES but can't tell for sure. It is just outside of where I have been feeding the other fish in my pond but in a shallower area.

Just an update on the training, quite a few of the RES in my larger tank are now taking pellets off the surface. I have a several RES that are approaching the 4" mark.

I am serioulsy thinking of putting them back in the pond in two weeks. One of the issues I have with the insulated tanks out in my shop are relatively low water temps, with the cooler weather here and 20% daily water changes my water temps have been consistantly in the upper 60's and low 70's. I think getting them back in the pond with higher water temps will help them grow better. My options are to either cage them or put them behind a blocking net and continue their pellet training for a few more weeks, or simply turn them loose. Right now I have huge numbers of fry and 1" GSH for them to dine on but pellets should be much easier for them to chase down.

If you have a cage available I would cage them for a 2-3 wks for additional habituation to pellets then release them. When young pellet eating fish get into an area with abundant natural foods they often go off feed until the natural foods are less abundant. The larger the pellet trained stockers are the more likely they will stay on pellets.

One more vote for the cage.

Thanks, I'll get my cage set up and move my largest RES into it.

Shorty,

Why so much of a water change and so often? You should be able to get by with 10 percent or less and not for several days if your fish load is not too high.

What are you using for mechanical filtration and biofiltration again? How large is tbe tank and what is the fish load?

Another option is to make it a ras/flow through hybrid to reduce water changes if you have a drain. Clamp a garden hose and nozzle to the fish tank and adjust the nozzle to add a light spray. This can add gallons of fresh water over time but at a low enough flow not to cause problems with D.O. or Ph.

I am doing 10% water change in the morning, then another 10% in the evening after the RES have been fed. This flushes out the poop and any uneaten food on the bottom of my large tank which has 255 gallons of water in it. Each water change only drops the temp 1 degree and it works very well cleaning out the tank which is why I do it. My tank temp always rebounds by the next time I feed. I do have a tendency to overfeed but like to keep the tank very clean. Keep in mind that this in an insulated aquaculture tank that keeps water temps very stable but it also makes it very hard for warm outside air temps to actually warm the water up. I have 55-60 very chunky RES in the 2-4" range in this tank.

Hey whatever works for you but it seems like a lot of unnecessary work and time to me. In the future if you add a center drain, external standpipe and a gate valve you could flush out all the crud with one pull of a handle. Better yet if it's circular tank you can inflow the water tangentially to the tank wall and create a circular flow to send the crude to the center drain which with one pull of the gate valve handle it's gone.

I have all of that and my 10% water change takes just five minutes.

Still seems like too much time and work to me, but if it works for you and you don't mind more power to ya.

How do you do water changes? and, How long does it take?

Shorty says five minutes.

I was asking you.

Sorry with all thise quotes and subquotes it looked to me like you were asking Shorty.

It takes me about 20 minutes as I have to wait for the clarifier drum to drain via a one inch I.D. hose, spray off the filter material, refill, and then put back the filter material. I could do it a lot faster if I skipped the filter material and just opened a valve, and drained off the dirty water, but typically there are a lot of solids trapped in the filter material -- if I have a heavy load of fish or tilapia -- that produce a lot of feces.

It depends on my fish load how often i do this and the species. With tilapia I could get by with once a week, wirh heavy loads of perch and bluegill I've done one 10 percent change per day to play it safe, but have gone three days with no issues.

BTW I will have two systems in the basement this fall and three systems at local high schools to raise and feed my gills and perch over the winter of which i get back in the spring for planting in the trophy pond. I've come up somewith more ways to simplify the system and make it easy to duplicate fairly reasonably. Maybe I can get one of the drafting classes to draw up an exploded view of tbe system for other high schools to duplicate.

What do you think Cecil, should I try feed training some of this years RES hatch?

Yes from my point of view.

Would they be easier to pellet train at this smaller size?

Catching them at this size without killing them might be challenge. The one in the pitcure was caught while raking some FA tonight and it didn't make it. They are very fragile at this size. When I was finished taking pitcures I dropped this one in the tank with the larger RES that I am pellet training and it lasted about 15 seconds. One of my larger 4" fish came up and claimed it for a snack just as it started to sink.

Sure!

Most likely as they is the way it is with bass and yellow perch.

BTW my yellow perch seem to prefer the 5D02 that floats for a little while over the sinking although they are snapping up the sinking feed. Go figure! Usually it take awhile for them to key in on the floating as the size gets larger.

With the surface tension of water you can float small sized sinking pellets if they are dropped from a very short distance above the water. With AM 300 I can float most of the pellets if they are dropped from a height of less than an inch.

Here are a few of the larger RES in my pellet training tank, both of these are 4-3/4", not too bad coming from last years hatch.

Very nice looking fish! I can't wait to see what they look like in 5 years!

I do have one RES in the tank that is slightly larger than the two pictures I posted, he is strictly a bottom feeder cleaning pellets off the bottom of the tank. I hope he does well in my fish cage.

Sometime in the next few days I am going to take all of the 3"+ RES from my tank and transfer them into my floating fish cage. I will feed them pellets for three weeks in the cage before turning them loose into the pond. My fish cage is placed near the area where I normally pellet feed my pond fish.

I plan to continue to pellet train the smaller RES I have and transfer them to the cage after I turn the larger ones loose.

Last weekend I was walking around the pond with a handful of AM500 to throw in areas of the pond not near the feeders. I saw a RES facing the shoreline about 3 ft out so I threw him a kibble. Sure enough he jumped at it and swam into a little deeper water where I coulnd't see him then returned in a few seconds. I thought I had (at least) one RES that would eat AM500. I threw him another... NOTHING. He learned the first time he didn't like it, I guess.

If the pellet didn't float back up right away your RES likely ate it. It's possible your RES didn't see the second pellet.

One thing I have noticed about the RES that I am pellet training is that they don't seem to see very well when food items are above their head and slightly in front of them. They always seem travel 15-20" or more straight out in front of them to eat something off the surface. This includes bloodworms on the surface which they love to eat. This might be one of the reasons they are hard to pellet train and prefer to hang out in deeper water. Their visual acuity and behavior seems to be geared for feeding on items below them rather than above.

Hmm cool observation shorty.. I like what your doing with the RES.. Keep up the good work man..

Great observation!

Update on the pellet training. I put 2/3 of the biggest RES that I had in my tanks into a cage in the pond on July 30th. Tonight I pulled the lid to see how they were doing.



I found a few 3" golden shiners in the cage with the RES.


Two of the bigger RES, looking good for 14 months.

Those things are HOGS! Looks like a few GSH snuck through the meshing of your cage, or am I seeing something else?

Yeah, a few 3" GSH snuck into the cage, I bet they were smaller when they first got in. I think my GSH have been spawning on the netting too.

Nice Shorty!

Those RES look excellent! Brutes!

Update on the pellet training. After I pulled the lid last time I added the remaining bottom third RES I still had out in my shop, about 3 dozen smaller fish. Last night I pulled the lid again and let most of them go into the pond. Here are some pictures.

Good work on getting RES pellet trained and to sizes up to 6.5".

Good job! And there are people who still say it can't be done. Of course I have an old text that says largemouth bass can't be feed trained either. LOL

I'm guessing I had 40 RES over 5" and at least twelve of them that were 6" to 6-1/2" in size. All of them hatched in 2012.

Seems to me that they have grown 1/2-3/4" in less than a month. Man are those some hefty ones! Very nice job. Bruce has some serious competition.

Bruce got a late start pellet training RES this summer but rumor has it that he is on his way to catching up.

Rumors started by some guy with the initials of BC and it ain't Bill Cody.

All the cool guys working with fish have a 'B' and a 'C' in their initials.

Except some are backwards. Which ones?

Backwards, forwards, upside down, inside out, whatever.

Backwards, forwards, upside down, inside out, whatever.

That got me tryin to think but my clacker swings pretty slowly and just now did it ring my bell. It ain't what you said Cecil but rather "over under sideways down" Recorded by the Yardbirds who later morphed into Led Zepplin.

I have five RES left that I moved indoors to a 75 gallon aquarium, they are now 7"+ and are FHM eating machines when the lights go out night.

Fascinating thread.

I know little about aquaculture or raising fish although I have spent literally hundreds of hours under the water over many years as a scuba diver observing fish behavior (mostly saltwater although a little freshwater). Mass spawning of gray Chromis is cool to watch. My wife is a macro photographer so that means I move slow in the water to not leave her behind and that means observing a lot of fish behavior that many divers that swim all the time miss. I hope my pond will clear up enough to get some underwater photos of my fish (no chance of getting wife in pond water after diving in the ocean for years).

Am learning bits and pieces as I pick this stuff up reading what you guys post. Redear seem like an interesting fish to me and I am wanting to get more in my pond. There were a few mixed in with the bluegill when stocked this spring but not as many as I would have liked. I was hoping to get some more this fall put in before the LMB get big enough to make them a snack. Not too sure if I am too late as I put the LMB in a couple months ago. When inquiring about getting RES they said call back first of November and we are almost there.

The fish cages and raising fish indoors is all a mystery to me but am picking up what I can. Maybe will give something a try next spring. Bought a seine the other day but have not tried to use it. Would like to see what is out in the pond. Maybe snag a grandson to help soon.

Anyway, thanks for all the good discussion and keep it up.

Have been feeding both sinking and floating pellets so hope some of my RES are getting their share off the bottom. About time to quit from what I have learned on PBF as my water temp is getting down close to 55.

snrub.

Wallace Fish Farms brought me 250 2-3" RES about a week ago. Put half of them in the old renovated pond and half to supplement the small population that were stocked this spring in the new pond.

I kept 4 of the smallest ones back and put them in an aquarium here in the house. First few days was pretty hard to get them to eat anything but they would take a little crushed up dry shrimp. Now they are voracious little things coming out of the structure I provided and looking at me to be fed. They are readily and competitively going after crushed up floating catfish feed (that sinks after it is crushed into small pieces with pliers).

Also put about 50 snails in with them out of the pond. Some are too large for them to eat but they have decimated the tiny ones and are working their way up in snail size. Need to collect some more for them and put in there.

Only have one that is kind of timid and only eating enough to sustain itself. The other three are go getters but only one will hit stuff on the surface occasionally. The other three will only hit stuff mid water or near the bottom. They seem to much prefer to hit something moving and aggressively get the crushed feed as it is sinking. Once it hits the bottom they loose interest but I noticed that later they will stare at something on the bottom for a while then pick it up. Sometimes a snail, sometimes a piece of the feed.

Had company last week, one of which was an eleven year old boy so thought it might be fun for him to trap some additional small fish out of the pond and put in the aquarium to watch along with the RES. Water is cold so not a lot went into the minnow trap but ended up with 4 very small BG ranging from one and a quarter inch to about an inch and a half. I was a little worried the RES would badger or eat the small BG but so far everything copacetic. The most aggressive RES once in a while will chase the smallest BG just a little like the smaller fish might be a meal but so far all 8 fish are still alive and doing well.

The RES are interesting to watch. More so than the BG. They definitely prefer subdued light as opposed to bright light. I leave the aquarium light off most of the time because with it on the RES spend time in the shadows of the structure (concrete cap block with three holes - they like sitting inside the holes when the light is on).

It appears to me they will abruptly swim to a spot on the bottom, stop and remain motionless except for fin movement to keep them in place in the current, and stare at something to see if there is movement. If it moves (as in a snail) they make a quick strike and pick it up, crunching it around in their mouth either till they spit it back out or end up crunching it up enough to eat it.

Interesting fish. I like them.

Thanks for the update and info. Let us know how it works. RES will eat any snail/crust/worm/invert etc. Also pellets.

I made a small feed ring for my aquarium RES, I placed it at the dark end of the tank where I have the light shut off. They are eating a few AM 500 floating pellets and an occasional cricket off the surface out of the feed ring.

I have used a piece of tin suspended about 10 inches from the pond bottom to feed RES over . The pellets float then sink landing on the tin. RES hide under the tin and come out to feed on pellets landing on the tin.

ewest, what depth of water is your tin setup in?

Do you have PVC ring above it to keep wind from floating the pellets off target?

Why not just feed sinking pellets? Maybe so some of the RES will start taking the surface pellets before they sink? In other words, for training them?

The small RES in my aquarium seem to like to catch stuff moving on the way down.

It is in a protected cove and was used behind a blocking net. Area about 2000 sq feet and water is from 0 to 5 feet. Tin is about 6 ft sq with edges bent up about 3 inches. No ring needed but would be a good idea if subject to wind influence. Feeder throws on top of tin. I have used sinking pellets there as well (winter). Floating used most as there are small BG being fed also. Have even mixed both types of pellets in the feeder during fall (decreasing water temps).

Thanks ewest. That makes sense. The RES do seem to like to hide out of the light.

Keep in mind my observations are from a person that has almost no experience with aquaculture or fresh water fish. That said, sometimes new eyes see things others may have missed. With that in mind I will give an observation that I noticed tonight.

Before I started getting interested in RES. BG. LMB and FHM my wife did most of the work with whatever aquarium fish we have had over the years. Mostly goldfish with the occasional batch of wild fish we would keep over the summer when our kids were small for them to observe. So not a lot of experience with observing fresh water fish or taking care of them in captivity.

MY RES have been eating well. They always seemed hungry and would take crushed up floating pellets. Problem is they only seemed interested in what was moving and what they caught while it was sinking. There was feed noticeably accumulating on the bottom. They went off feed and I suspected the water quality had become poor because of the excess feed in the tank.

Wife suggested we suck up the feed off the bottom with a mesh over the shop vac hose. Said it works slick and what she uses in her inside and outside goldfish pond/containers. Ok. Let's give it a try. Like I said, she has attended to all this stuff in the past and me with little experience. Important safety tip. When a newbie (me) is helping for the first time, be sure the hose to the vac is installed in the correct "sucking" inlet and NOT the "blowing outlet. When she said "turn it on" bad things happened.

An hour later the fish aquarium was completely cleaned, moved to an area of the house that does not have carpet on the floor, and I am sure what must have been temporarily traumatized RES and BG seemed happy and were swimming about. Their appetite came back today.

During the somewhat tense move of the aquarium we decided to relocate an odd FHM that a few months before had ended up in her inside goldfish pot. The RES (3") and even the very small BG (1 1/4 - 2") did not seem to eat much off the bottom. My previous experience with FHM in the aquarium and my observations of them in the pond told me they were not particular where the feed was located. Maybe the one medium size FHM would help keep the bottom clean. We put the single FHM in with the RES and BG.

Finally the observation. I'm getting there. Fed the fish early morning. They were hungry. Like usual the RES ate well the feed that was dropping while ignoring what rested on the bottom. The BG also ate good on the dropping feed and the largest one also picked a little on the bottom. But the FHM, not being so particular, ate anything in sight. In doing so he would often pick up a piece to big to consume. Biting off a chunk or spitting it out, one of the RES then seen the feed "move" and took it.

So I am thinking, maybe I need to put some more FHM in with the RES as "trainer fish". I had also noticed before that if the fin action of one RES caused a feed morsel to move another RES would often see it and take the previously ignored feed. As you said your RES ate off the tin, I knew it was only a matter of training to get my RES to eat stationary feed off the bottom of the aquarium. Maybe FHM will aid in that training?

I need to see if I can catch a few more out of the pond, put them in with the other (lonely) FHMN, and see if it helps. Maybe if noting else, it will keep the feed cleaned up off the bottom so it does not foul the water.

Any one else have other suggestions for training? With only four RES in the aquarium (with most in the ponds) this is merely a learning/observation situation for me. Not of any real significance concerning my pond. But never know, I might have a need to train some more for some reason in the future.

Sorry for the long rant for a rather simple observation.

snrub

snub, I can support your observation of fish using fin movement. I have only watched CC and noticed a couple times of this. When building a prototype FISharvester I used sheet metal for the floor. CC would swim around outside and make splashes with tails that would knock the feed out of the feeder. When I used floating feed they could also use this same method. I have fixed this by using only sinking pellets and found a PVC panel that is ribbed and has texture to it. Once they realize they can't control the feed they become conditioned to going in and getting the feed. Sometimes it's hard to believe that I'm dealing with dumb animals.

So I have heard RES are hard to catch.

Is it that they are usually just lower numbers than the BG, or is it really harder to get them to take a hook?

I realize they tend to live and spawn at deeper depths. Would you fish for them more like CC but with different bait? Or does the CC get the bait before the RES gets there so that is why they are harder to catch?

What about in a pond that had the main fish as RES? Still going to be hard to catch?

In our refurbished pond I put 10 5" BG late last summer 2013 (I imagine they could have gotten one late spawn off, but maybe not) and then 125 3" RES a couple months later. An acre or a little less pond size. Had put FHM in earlier in the spring. Have not put any predators in but probably will this next spring (2014) or early summer.

Or maybe I should hold off another year with the predators (2015) since I placed such a small number of forage fish???? Did not really have solid plans for this pond, which is probably a mistake.

Snrub, RES are easy to catch when they start spawning. Just like BG. They start a little earlier than BG like late April, around here. I catch them the same way I fish for spawning BG. Very little or no weight just enough to cast, and a #6 or #8 hook with a small piece of nightcrawler. Put it on their beds. If you don't get a hit immediately, move it very slowly. If the pond is very clear use a 4 or 6 lb flouro leader.

And funny thing is, I have caught them in the same spot that I am catching BGs in.

I am guessing in SE Ks RES spawning should start pretty quickly at the end of March or first part of April? I would like to catch some from the initial stocking to see how big they have gotten. BG are about 6.5" stocked at the same time as the initial RES.

What depth do you usually find their spawning beds?

Been traveling ten days with a group of farmers and Ag related people in Australia from Sydney to Brisbane. Pretty sickening sight from a pond standpoint, as most of the ponds are either dry or very, very low.

Returning home soon and hope to catch some RES to put in sons pond to help stock it. The BG we caught a couple weeks ago for his pond we were finding at about 3' deep under our dock.