Well, Gents, my bluegill that were stocked last fall have been on their nests for the last three weeks...their little colony looks like a moonscape with a lot of activity. Both bluegill and FHM fry are wall to wall in my 1 acre pond, so my fingerling bass that were stocked the middle of May should have plenty to feed on. It is hard to believe how many fry those bluegill can generate.

A pond is like the field of dreams...if you build it, they will come. It's been fun to watch life develop: plankton blooms, frog and toad eggs, tadpoles, turtles, fish spawning and those crazy water bugs that move about 60 miles an hour going in circles. Funny how a pond takes you back to being a kid, no matter how old you are.

Sounds like you are gonna have some fat fast growing bass! Keep us posted on how they do... How big were they when stocked?

Fingerlings were around 2" when stocked, so I'm not sure what to expect by the end of the growing season, which is around the middle of October in Missouri..

I had to restock my Missouri pond with Bass last year. No one can explain but essentially every bass in a 3 1/2 acre deep pond died. The BG and CC and GC all were un affected. But to the issue...I restocked with 3-4 inch LMB last June, by November, the largest were 8-10 inches, the smallest 5-6.

They have a huge amount of forage with many age classes of BG available to them. And this spring there was a spawn from some of the bass.

In addition to a 10:1 ratio of bluegill to bass, I also stocked 7 pounds of minnows...all that by way of learning from these forums....so I'm hoping my little bass will get a supercharged couple of years from the intitial forage base.

Did you ever figure out what killed the bass, Habitatpro? What a tough winter we had with the ice and then the snow cover...wonder if that did it? What part of Missouri are you located? I'm in Callaway County, approx 25 miles southeast of Columbia.

QUESTION for anybody: Do Bluegill eat their own fry?

The adult male guarding the nest most likely won't but other than him all the other BG and just about any other sunfish or shiner will be trying to eat the eggs and fry.

The biggest predator of BG from egg through yoy is other BG. Not even close for any other predator. Lots of studies on BG spawning activity. Neff found that BG males can smell their offspring and differentiate between theirs and others. The others are promptly eaten. If a male leaves the nest the neighboring adult BG males will eat the unguarded fry.

I caught 2 very large BG this year (yeah, no pic = just a fish story ) on a BG colored and shaped crankbait that is almost 3" long and about 1 1/2" high.

There's no way that they could have fit them in their mouths, but both BG had engulfed the rear treble hook. It took some work to get it out of their mouths without doing damage. (I was trying for LMB to take out of the pond.)

In a word, no. I had conversations with 4 different fisheries Bio's in 3 states plus MDC experts and all had a rater consistent answer...It was likely a specie specific disease, virus, or a bacterial issue. When asked what that means one was honest enough to tell me thats a pretty standard answer when they have no other idea.

The pond is 22 feet deep in deepest, 3 1/2 acres, spring fed as well as runoff, no runoff from any tilled area, water is clear, no BG died, no CG died, and no CC died....what really smoked me was we had been catching a good number of 5-6 lb fish, a lot of 2-3 pound and the biggest was a 9. and in less than a 12 months...gone....never saw a floater, no otters or such.

I have decided they were taken to the mothership by aliens or I have zombies living in the timber. Im in Bates County, Mo, the only one stoplight county in Missouri.

We have to walk on 'em now, the water is all gone.

Hotter'n a snake's butt in a wagon rut.