Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain redear spawn

This morning I went to the spawning point of my lake and saw 3 redear on beds with the numerous blue gill that were already spawning. This point has about 15 beds on it. Will redear only spawn with their own species, or will they spawn with blugill? Also These fish were very fat, were they females, or males. They each were guarding their own bed and did not see any other redears in the area.

redear typically spawn prior to bluegill spawns, but have seen the same thing with both on bed at same time. I also see several fish that apper to have characteristics of both species, so hybridization does occur.

Most of the literature I have seen says that hybridization of various memebers of the Lepomis genus is quite common. However it's more common when one of the two species is rare or spawning substrata is limited. One of my ponds is a .62 acre pond that cries out for redears due to the mulitude of snails. Unfortunately I attempt to sell bluegills in a niche market, and my customers do not want hybrids. I just don't want to take the chance of them hybridizing although I'm sure the offspring would of large size.

I have a few natural lakes near me where redear/bluegill hybrids are quite common.

Thanks Greg & Cecil! That is good info. I'll keep an eye on them to see if they do get a b/g female to lay eggs.

Brad, Cecil Baird has suggested that a very large "Bluegill" that I caught in my pond could be a Redear Hybrid. I can tell you that it is the biggest "Bluegill" that I or anybody I know has ever seen. If your Redears are crossbreeding, you may have some pleasant surprises in store for you. If you would like to see a picture of the fish, send me your Email address.
Jim

Would love to see pic's. bassnut17@yahoo.com THANKS

this is an interesting post. my pond is 7.5 acres and 20 years old. i have owned it for a year now and have seen no evidence of bluegill and redear cross-breeding. each of the hundreds of fish caught looks to my untrained eye to be pure. i was also able to see several large beds this year due to clear water. the redear and bluegill did not share nesting areas. in fact they were several hundred feet apart. i wonder if it is less likely to have them cross if the body of water is a bit larger? jb

jb,
I have seen them cross in large ponds as well up to 65 acres. If the temperature went up at a steady rate the redear would spawn first starting at temps as low as 60 (once per year). Then bluegill would start a month later when temps hit above about 66 (then can spawn every month). Of course mother nature throws some curve balls and you may see them breeding at the sametime and this is when cross breeding may occur.

this was an odd year for water temps and i'd expect that this would be the year to see some x-breeding. my water hit 60 degrees on april 29th, then stayed in the 60's for nearly 7 weeks with all the rain we received. the shellcracker didn't sit on their nests until may 29th, when the water had been in the mid 60's for three full weeks. some bluegill spawned earlier and some later; and not surprising, we are catching and releasing some now that are fat with eggs. the bluegill and shell cracker definently still kept their nests seperate though. i sure can't keep up with, nor figure out mother nature. sure is fun watching the show though!

Okay considering the above discussion and factoring in other threads on the board regarding "Georgia Giants" and other hybrid bluegills (that are bluegill crossed with those %*#$& green sunfish), has anyone in a controlled environment tried to cross redears and bluegills to see what charactaristics the F1 end up with? I'd be quite curious.

Troy,
Good question, hope someone sheds some light, but I'm sure it has been tried. The reason the GA giants are so popular is because they are agressive due to the green influence. BTW I will bring out the grass carp Mon.

there has been tons of work done crossing all differnet types of sunfish. try searching at the science library at any university. if my memory serves me, I found alot from the University of Illionis most was old stuff from the 1960's but its good info. There are certain fish farmers around here that claim to have "invented" the Georgia Giant but I found papers to the contrary. that cross was developed and researched long before said "fish farmer" was in business.

Topwater -- I suspect that Greg and Shan are thinking of some of the old work at the Illinois Natural History Survey. A guy by the name of Dr. William Childers did a lot of experimentation with sunfish crosses. I've got a copy of his report from 1967, and it has very nice color plates of the various crosses among bluegill, redear sunfish, green sunfish, and warmouth (incidentally, the warmouth were apparently pretty far removed from a genetic perspective and did not cross as well as the others).

Anyway, Dr. Childers used both male BLG and female RES to get the cross, and also made the opposite cross (male RES X female BLG). In both cases, the offspring were 97% male, which is one of the earlier citations I know of the tendency for the hybrids to be primarily one sex.

He also said that when the first generation hybrids (F1) were stocked in a pond with largemouth bass, they produced very little of an F2 generation. However, when the F1 hybrids were put in ponds by themselves, the F2 generations were abundant. So, even with 97% males, there still was fertility.

A little history lesson!! :-)

Dave

Dave
That is very interesting info. Any chance of scanning the color plates and making them available? I'm sure there are a number of us who would like to see them.
Thanks
Jim

Jim -- I could scan those pictures tomorrow when I get to the office (e.g., a .jpg file). However, I don't know how to post a picture file or image on this website. I wanted to post a picture of some smallmouth bass fry a few days ago, but didn't know how to do so.

Can you or someone else provide instructions?

Dave

To Dave and All Interested, Detailed instructions about how to post picures on the POND BOSS forum are located in Questions & Observations section, topic: Posting Pictures dated Oct 10, 2002.

Thanks, Bill. The "worst" thing is that I actually searched for something like that on the site, and couldn't find it. :-)

I'll get those pictures scanned this morning.

Dave

Dave:
I don't know either, but if you made a file on your home computer, you could email it to those with interest.
Jim

Bill -- The PictureStage.com site is no longer functional.

Jim -- I'll be glad to e-mail the scanned image (.jpg) if this doesn't work.



Folks -- These three fishes are a Bluegill X Redear (top), a Green X Redear (middle), and a Green X Bluegill (bottom). If the images do not paste, I will be glad to e-mail the picture file if you contact me.

Please remember that I do not "own" these images. I'm just making the assumption that we're sharing interests, and we can all take a look at the fish photos.

Dave

I'd love to see a copy of the images, toph2o@bellsouth.net, and thanks!

Topwater -- the picture is on the way.

Dave

Dave,

If it's not too much trouble I'd really like a copy of those pix as well. Please send to prgraham@hotmail.com.

Thanks in advance!

Paul -- the picture is saved on my computer at work. I'll e-mail it to you tomorrow morning.

Dave

For those who may have a continuing interest in the Hybrid Bluegill/Redear that I appear to have in my pond, I have been trying to catch additional examples. I have had some luck as follows: using small crawlers I have caught 2 large fish, 1 @ 1lb 13oz on a handheld scale and another about the same size, but it slipped out of my hand before I could weigh it. These things are quite a handfull and you really can't hold them with one hand. Perhaps more interesting is some "smaller" fish in the 9" to 12" range. They are quite dark in color as opposed to the "standard" Bluegills, although I can't detect any Red on the flaps whereas the large fish exhibit a narrow red band on the edge. I am pretty sure that there is some reproduction going on and will have to continue studying the population. Whatever is going on, catching these things on an ultralight with 4 lb test line is quite an experience. My inclination is to believe that they are Redears but since I have no previous experience with them, I can't say for sure. If these are Redears, you all should be planting them in your ponds if you are in the right climate.
Jim