Shipping fish by carrier is very risky business. The more fish per bag the greater the chance of some dead ones on arrival. Shiners are not hardy fish. Often results are similar to yours. Shipping is always best during cold air temps. The smaller the fish the easier they ship with success. You would be much further ahead driving to some fish farm to get your fish.

No fish farm even close to me. The first bag was great, and they are replacing this one.

I'm a big fan of golden shiners. About once a month I go to the bait shop and buy a pound of medium size for $20. Throw them into my frabill aerated cooler and dump them in...most trips I don't have a single minnow go belly up.

That's awesome. Wish I had somewhere local to do that

If you want Golden Shiners, I recommend Anderson Fish Farm's shipping of Golden Shiner frye in units of 250,000/bag.

It will get GS established in your pond.

That's where I ordered from. Got the 1.5 inch. Heard those were more likely to be fertile. Put them in now, hoping fewer would get eaten before they spawn.

If you don't have a strong plankton community esp zooplankton species diversity,,,, GSH will not thrive. Also if you don't have adequate weed habitat and woody cover habitat at 20%-25% of the pond shoreline area then GSH will struggle to maintain good numbers with a strong LMB population. Also if the pond does not have lots of small 3"-5" BG the shiners will struggle to survive long enough to get to 5"-6" long.

Maybe better than buying GSH as forage reduce the number of foxes in your chicken coop. LMB are usually over crowded in ponds creating the perceived notion there is too little forge fish present when in reality there are too many predators, over eating the pond productivity resulting in not enough food.

Understood. I realize that harvest and fertilizing are much more important. I wanted to do this anyway. Will do the others as well.

In my relatively low alkalinity, infertile pond, I've found that threadfin shad survive far better than golden shiners. TFS only get wiped out in severe cold winters, but shiners completely disappear within six months.

Doesn't a pond have to be relatively large to support those? Also, I think our winters are too harsh.

Pond size is not as important as it having a good proper plankton community that helps TFS thrive.

However, the smaller the pond (assuming fertile) the bigger the chance the TFS will overpopulate and over graze the plankton. In my experience TFS do much better in 5 acre plus ponds. I have seen them do ok in 2–3-acre ponds that are well managed and fertile.

Probably because GS are prey for a much larger range of LMB. In ponds large LMB don't make a living on TFS. The main benefit to TFS is they are targeted by 1-3 lb LMB whereas GS are larger and are utilized by all sizes of LMB over 2 lbs. +-. Also due to the difference in reproduction and habitat choices.

I have ordered from Andersons three times now within a year and all three times have worked out really good. I think they dope the fish a little to make them sleepy then fill bag with oxygen and keep the insulated boxes cool with ice gel packs.

First time I ordered I bought a box of 1000 1.5" and a box of 415 3" maybe a couple dozen total between boxes dead loss at most, I think it was June or July last summer.
Last month I ordered a box of 130 4" brooders maybe 5 or 6 dead loss total.
Last week another brooder box of 130 4" same.

I took them out to pond within an hour of them being delivered and floated them for a half hour like they recommend then turned them loose.
I've been pleased with the transactions I've had, will do it again. GSH are hard to find close to me so it is a good source for my situation. Hopefully they will breed for me in my ponds.

Shipping fish is best done in Spring and Fall when water is cool. 46F to 65F is best for the best success.

I'm almost ADD when I get something in my head, last week this thread got me wanting more GSH. My WE and P in the new pond have some size and are hitting absolutely everything we cast at them soooo...

I ordered another box of brooders! These were huge, biggest they have sent me yet. Split them between two ponds. I just wanted to be sure that I have some big enough to spawn this spring if the others might have gotten ate up from this spring or last year (they probably didn't). I was VERY pleased by the size of them, only one dead loss.
My perch are 8"-10" and the walleye are 11"-12".

TUNA!!!!

If your habitat is abundant you should get good survival of offspring from those GSH. Lack of good habitat = lack of forage numbers.

My new pond has a lot of man-made structure in it, but not a lot of plant life yet. It's a deep pond

My older pond I put half in has all kinds of habitat probably 75% aquatic cover, they should really thrive in there if they can keep ahead of the LMB and mergansers. It's a shallow pond.

Can you throw some cedars in the new pond?

Placing them in shallow water with the cut trunk on the bank would still provide some excellent and easily removable cover for your GSH and their offspring.

No, don't want any wood or brush that could/would eventually break down. All the structure in the new pond is concrete/plastic/rock. And the shallow stuff is a no go with swimming taking priority over fishing in this pond. We do have a very large beach area covered in a couple inches of pea gravel right now that will start out at 2' descending to 5'-6' then a two-foot-tall rock ledge to help contain sand sliding...then it drops off real fast into 15' then gradually to 20'ish by the far side of pond. Water is about 1/3 up the beach area now and we will shoot sand over all of it this summer.

Do have a good-sized ledge covered with almost a foot of pea gravel and some stone structures in one back corner that will be around 6' with larger football size rip/rap stone on edge dropping to 20'. We should get some type of plant growth at some point when the water hits full level, but will keep a close eye on that.

Our other two ponds are wildlife ponds, one around 3' 1/3 of an acre the other a little over 5' that is an acre. Those are both very weedy with all kinds of plant life, small one just minnows/frogs/turtles the bigger has LMB, minnows, green sunfish, mosquito minnows, a few channel cats and now shiners.

I think the plastic habitat you have posted is awesome. However, I don't think it is dense enough to hide GSH fry in a pond without vegetative cover.

If you are super worried about adding organic material, you can just start a bonfire and stick the cedar in it for 30 seconds and burn off all of the needles. (Someone on the forum cleaned their's with fire, but I can't remember who?)

I was just thinking that with the trunk on the bank, all swimmers can easily see them, and you can pull them out at any time when they are starting to decay and/or pi$$ing you off!

I can't remember, did you put BG in your new pond? There have been mixed reviews on Pond Boss about them nipping at swimmers. If this is the main swimming pond for your family, I would be interested to hear if lots of swimmers teaches the BG to stay away, or if they become acclimated to swimmers and lose all fear?

Golden Shiners like to distribute their eggs on vegetation in shallow water, even flooded grass that is covered with 6" of water. Without the correct spawning habitat, they will struggle to get a foothold in the pond.

There are some grass&weed clumps that grew down on sides of pond last summer/fall before water came up that might help them untill a little natural underwater vegatation grows?

We didn't put any bluegill in. We put 100 Red Eared Sunfish in last spring when we added the other fish, I was told they are much more "shy" and shouldn't bother swimmers or over populate and get out of hand. I have seen a couple of small schools of them under the dock, but they don't seem to want to bite on anything we have thrown at them...they look like they are around 6" now. Hopefully they can self-sustain and grow huge so we can eat some of them in the future.

H2O, I'm interested that you got red ears rather than pumpkinseed. Similar panfish, but I thought pumpkinseed are better adapted to northern climate.

I do have redear (RES), but rarely catch any. They are much less aggressive than bluegill & are difficult to tempt on artificial lures. Live bait on bottom is usually the ticket. They do a good job keeping the snail population in check, so tend to limit snail parasites crossing over to fish. In Louisiana they are called shellcrackers.

We wanted some species of panfish, everything that I researched about the RES made it look right for our situation and our local hatchery had them. I have read that they kind of fill their own niche in a pond and that they are harder to catch, don't spawn heavy but do grow large. It seemed like a good fit for what we are trying to do. Also there weren't any pumpkinseed available close and I had read they are more prolific breeders.

We were looking for something different with this pond, fish that would not bother swimmers and fish that are great to eat. Our species that we thought about putting in changed the more research we did.
We decided on;
FHM and GSH, went heavy with them as soon as the pond had some depth. Minnows spawned like crazy.

Then late last spring we put in;
25 Walleye,
150 Yellow Perch,
100 Red Ears
25 Black Crappie..that I wish now we didn't put in, have taken 14 out so far.
All the fish were around 4" when they went in.

Early Nov we put in 50 4" Small Mouth

Had considered Hybrid Striped Bass but read how they will eat up everything they can fit in their mouths, so not interested in those.

Plan is to thin the walleye down some as they are big enough to eat. Walleye should help keep perch and other smaller fish populations from getting out of control.
The two species we are most interested in are the SM and YP and plan on putting a slot limit on them for thinning for fish fries.

I have always just liked GSH and think they are a very cool forage fish, hope they can find a space in the pond. I guess I can always stock more.
All of those species are supposed to avoid swimmers and that hopefully should keep the wife happy...or at least as happy as she can be as the kids, grandkids and I are catching and eating fish!

PS like BG tend to overpopulate. RES are not known to overpopulate. In addition, PS can be nippers.

Sounds like a good plan except for crappie. Only question is survivability of RES due to cold.

Sounds like you've really thought it through. Best of luck!

You will be just fine with the RES in the pond. Best choice for a panfish in the pond to avoid nipping at swimmers. You have to get up into Michigan to get water that is too cold for RES. BUT, if you aerate and have the diffuser in the deepest part of the pond running during the winter, you can cool the water too much for the RES.

We have both RES and golden shiners in our 1 ac pond. Both have done exceedingly well. We catch more RES than anything else. Unfortunately most are too small to keep. We have large schools of golden shiners roaming the banks. I do have several submerged cedars in the pond. Right now,I’m pretty low on predator fish. Just YP for the most part, but hopefully a few SMB and HSB are still out there.
I’ve often wondered if we didn’t have too many golden shiners, and maybe the larger ones were eating up all the YP fry. I keep restocking YP in hopes of getting a larger population of keeper YP. They are our favorite fish for the dinner plate.