i was wondering if anyone is having a problem with too many Golden Shiners. I caught a few this past week end about 5-6 inches and there seems to be schools of many different sizes, problem? or good thing? I have LMB, BG and CC

Too many forage fish is usually not a problem. Abundant forage fish usually creates a quality fishery. Your LMB should be thriving with extra forage available. If you want to remove fish of a specific size look into buying a relatively short small mesh gill net maybe 1/2"-1" mesh or a larger sized fish trap such as cloverleaf or Z trap. Fish the gill net perpendicular to shore. All fish caught in the gill net will be dead or going to die after removing them from the net. There are some net companies that sell monofilament gill nets.

Bill and others will chime in with more authority but....

An abundance of shiners is an AWESOME problem to have. They have almost no impact on yoy bass and are one of the best forages for them (if you can keep them in large quantity, which is hard since bass love em).

If you had too many BG or Crappie you can run into trouble keeping your bass population up long term since they will prey on YOY basslings.

If its bugging you castnet a bunch out and give them to friends to fish with as live bait. Or maybe sell a few buckets a month to a local bait shop

If LMB are your main fish of concern, don't touch those shiners. If you're more focused on BG, you could remove some of the larger GSH. Personally, I wouldn't worry about removing any either way. As long as you have a decent population of bass, they will bring the GSH into control on their own if given a little time. It only takes about a 10 inch LMB to eat those bigger shiners you've seen.

thanks everyone! Good info!

5 years ago I had what appeared to be millions of small GSHs. I added LMB and now they are just about gone.

crimson- that always makes me wonder how shiners survived in the wild

That depends on the amount of weed cover in the lake and the bass population in the lake. A public lake near here has a reproducing, self sustaining population of shiners. I have caught them up to 11" in length.

I think it's all in the amount of predators. I let my bass population get too high. My BG and Shiner populations were suffering. I culled a LOT of bass last year and I added Tilapia this spring. My BG population has recovered nicely but I think it was too late for the GSHs.

I have a lot of shiners and they tend to limit recruitment of SMB in my pond, I do think it would different if LMB were present. I removed 308 large shiners last year and have removed another 329 large shiners so far this summer out of my 1/4 acre pond.

How do you catch the shiners?

Micro jig, a weighted casting bubble (slip bobber), and a 1/2" piece of nightcrawler.

Thank you

They are pretty easy to catch with a small hook, I pulled 200+ out averaging 7" during the month of July with just a dozen nightcrawlers.

I used to catch them on corn when I lived in NY. I’d squeeze the hard part of the kernel out just leaving the “shell” so when they bit it, it would collapse and expose the hook. Also, a tiny piece of bread pinched onto a #12 hook. Smaller the hook the better.