Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Shreaded Tail

I don't know for sure if it means anything, but the BG I caught this past weekend had a tail that looked like ground beef. I think this means that they are building nests and spawning. I'll take a pic and post it after this next weekend. I am actually pretty excited about it. Maybe this means I'll be able to cut back on my agressive stocking plan.

It does sound like it could be a fish that is spawning... Is this the first your BG have spawned in your pond?

Yes, I believe this is my first spawn. They may have spawned last year, but I was not here to observe it. Along the north bank there was a lot of activity. For hours there were fish thrashing the water. I assume this is what was going on.

Below is my stocking history. I feel I have stocked more than what should be required to have a healthy forage fish population. I may have slightly overstocked my bass but I don't mind addiding additional forage fish to keep up each year if necessary.

The problem with these dang ponds is that it is just so hard to know what is going on under the water. I don't know if I lost some of my bass last year during my oxygen problem or not. I have caught 5-6 of the Tigre Bass and 2 HSB this spring but that is all. I just have no way of gauging whether there are a lot more bass still alive and just too smart to hit my lure or if I only have a handfull of bass left after last year's oxygen issue......oh the stress of a pond!!!!

I am going to stock some Tilapia this weekend and probably some additional CNBG or Hybrid Perch.

Makoclay, I don't chime in very often but your post sure got my attention. You mention stocking hybrid perch, do you know what the perch is hybridized with? Many years back I did some cooperative studies with a fish lab in Belgium and we produced hybrid perch P.fluviatilis (Eurasian perch) x P. flavescens (Yellow perch) and had some good growth experience. I was just wondering if this is the cross you are referring to or is it something else altogether.

Jim

Jim would be good to hear about those YP variants as many would be interested. I do think Makoclay is talking about HBG (sometimes sunfish are called perch in the south).

Jim, do you know if those hybrid perch are fertile? I suspect if they are fertile, and can back cross with the native yellow perch you'd be hard pressed to find states that would allow the stocking of them for fear of genetic dilution of the native perch genetics. A lot of states are banning the possession of transport of rudd because of the fear of them watering down the golden shiner genetics.

I will try to find out if they are fertile or not. I really don't think that they are. When I bought them, I was told that the Hybrid Perch were for growing BIG bluegill and that the CNBG were prolific breeders and would procreate and make for a better forage fish.

In hindsight, I think I'll quit buying the Hybrid Perch and just stick with the CNBG. I have plenty of really large bluegill and since my goal is big bass I don't want them to have any competetition.

Disclaimer: I am using the term perch and bluegill interchangeably

Yes, Texans confuse us who refer to yellow and white perch as perch and BG and RES as sunfish.

Hybrid sunfish are fertile, but tend to be mostly males depending on the exact cross.

Don't feel bad CJ. I have confused myself. I always thought that blue gill = perch = sun fish = bream.

But, isn't a LMB in the sunfish family, which would make it a bream? or is that brim?

We should all learn scientific names to stop the confusion... HAHA

In Texas, they're all perch. In the Southeast, they're puhch.

CJ
You hit the nail on the head, while I did not try any backcrosses we expected that the hybrid would be fertile. For that reason (among others) I was not allowed to raise any of those fish in my lab, all of the fertilized eggs were shipped off to Belgium for rearing. From what I recall the hybrid perch (Perca) accepted formulated feed better than the control yellow perch and unlike the yellow perch fry could be easily trained on feed rather than going through a zooplankton (live feed stage) this is probably due to the eurasian eggs producing larger fry than we typically see in our yellow perch. In general hybrid growth was slightly faster than the eurasian parental stock and much better than the American parental stock. Because of the potential for escape and establishment of this potentially invasive species I rather doubt that they would be allowed into the country. At the time I was only able to bring in gametes and even that was closely monitored by the USDA. If i can I'll try to find the publication on these fish and give you the reference. On another note our hybrid walleyes (saugeyes) are going to market within the next few weeks. After 1 year of growth in a recycle system the fish averaged 1.5 lbs and some of the bigger ones were over 2lbs. They were started as eggs last April and trainied to formulated feed indoors as fry. The scaled skin-on fillet yields were 50% or a little better and I can tell you they fried brown and tasted mighty fine.

Dave,
In Wisconsin perch are perch and everything else is muskey food

As long as I'm here I might as well tell you about some of our other crosses. We tried all possible combinations of yellow perch sauger and walleye and none of the perch crosses were viable. Some of those crosses were called percheye, sauerch wallerch and the one we really had high hopes for wes the perger. That's a cross between male perch and female sauger. Our interest was to take this fish, grind it up, make a patty and grill it. From a commercial standpoint if you can't successfully market a perger burger you aren't really trying. I had dreams of being the perger burger king, oh well.

Well, Jim Held, you've got to aim high. Fish in a blender makes quite a protein dish as demonstrated on SNL many, many years ago (or was it Second City TV?).

The UN has been doing that with tilapia for years.

Cool stuff Jim... Crazy things happen when you mess with genetics. But to feed to burgeoning population of the world, we're gonna have to do some off the wall things.

Jim,

There's a fish supplier in WV that advertises "Seminole Striped Yellow Perch" with (European strain) in parenthesis. They should get an A for salesmanship but is it a good to say they are a European strain?

http://zettsfishhatchery.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/CompleteCatalog.pdf

Other than just physical damage by spawning male Lepomids and people putting them in holding cages, or fish baskets, I understand shredded tails can be a sign of stress. I once saw that in some hybrid bluegills I had just purchased from a supplier back when I used them.

Cecil.
Maybe it's just salesmanship as far as I know there are no European strains of P. flavescens (yellow perch), on the other hand if the fish they are selling are truly P. fluviatilis (Eurasian perch) I wouldn't be surprised if the U.S. Fish and Wildlife people would like to have a pointed chat with these folks about where they got them from and how they got into the country. One telling characteristic of fluviatilis is a small black triangle and associated thick fin rays at the posterior end of the anterior (spiny)dorsal fin. Now I'm not an expert on the legal implications of exotic imports but I do know that if our (Wisconsin) DNR ever caught wind that someone was culturing an exotic outdoors or worse yet selling an exotic for culture there would be BIG trouble. After looking at the catalogue it's hard to say just what they are selling. Has any one on Pond Boss bought these fish and do they have the fluviatilis marking?

Jim
not making waves just waving goodbye

I found this information about "european pearch" http://www.thefishsite.com/articles/445/farming-of-eurasian-perch

Zett's is famous for their fancy names... I guess giving a fish a fancy name helps sell them to the average Joe. When I see that, I wonder if they stretch names, what else are they stretching...