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I don't believe you have to worry. It looks like a female RES -- one that has about a gazillion eggs insider of her.

The bottom RES appears to be a male.

The back of ear flap on a female is usually lined with white that is dotted with an orange spot at the tip. The males have a red spot.

The pond and fish look fantastic.


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Rest easy....female RES.


"Forget pounds and ounces, I'm figuring displacement!"

If we accept that: MBG(+)FGSF(=)HBG(F1)
And we surmise that: BG(>)HBG(F1) while GSF(<)HBG(F1)
Would it hold true that: HBG(F1)(+)AM500(x)q.d.(=)1.5lbGRWT?
PB answer: It depends.
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Whew that is great news!! Any ideas on feeding, golden shiner stocking, and yellow perch culling?


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Pond looks like it is coming along great... Set any minnow traps to survey your forage? If you want, I'll try to meet you at your farm this summer with my big seine and we'll see what comes in...

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Congrats on the nice Smallmouth's, and u nailed it with the nice RES

Keep up the good work

Tracy


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Originally Posted By: CJBS2003
Pond looks like it is coming along great... Set any minnow traps to survey your forage? If you want, I'll try to meet you at your farm this summer with my big seine and we'll see what comes in...


That would be awesome! Thanks!


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Made it out to the pond this weekend and did some fishing. My fatheads have disappeared but the smallmouth are biting. I caught a few on a drop shot 4" senko, they were all from the same area and appeared to be the same 14" size. Is it possible these were spawned this year?





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Those are either 2 or 3 yr old fish. They are definitely large enough to have spawned this year. Next year you may have to remove some of the offspring based on your goals and amount of forage that is present to keep the bass growing well. Didn't you also stock some additional forage species with the advice/help of CJBS?


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I stocked the following:
grass shrimp
fathead minnows
crayfish
banded killifish
tesselated darters
johnny darters
golden shiners
bluntnose minnows
spotfin shiners
greenfin shiners
red eared sunfish
yellow perch

In my forage pond I stocked 50 lake chubsuckers along with 50 spotfin last fall. I have not seen any sign of them since. Hopefully the chubsuckers will start to appear in the next year or so and i can put some of the larger ones in the big pond.

I was never able to find a source for SMB so I wild caught them and stocked 7 from 6-11" in Fall of 2013 and an additional 7 of the same size in the spring of 2014. I saw no evidence of a spawn last year but this year there were black fry everywhere by early May and now my fatheads are gone :-)

Last edited by RockvilleMDAngler; 09/08/15 10:23 AM.

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I haven't posted on here in a while because I have been so busy this past year that I haven't been able to get out to the pond much. In the times I have I have been doing quite well. In the spring I caught several nice 2lb+ smallmouth and plenty of 10-14" yellow perch. My SMB must have had a nice spawn this year as I started to catch numbers of 4-8" SMB in late August, after catching 8 of them in an hour I proceeded to catch another 15 and cull them but ever since then I am not catching huge numbers in the same way I was. Every trip yields 2 or 3 dinks and usually one or two over 14" per hour of fishing so I am pretty happy.

Well this weekend I took my wife and kids to the farm for the weekend to do some shooting, fishing, and to get my kids to burn some energy. Mission definitely accomplished! On Saturday all of us spent about an hour fishing and my son reeled in his first bass, a healthy looking 8" smallmouth:


As I am taking that picture my wife lets out a yell "COME HERE! I GOT A GIANT!" and I see a big fish jump out of the water and her rod bent in half. She proceeds to bring in the biggest smallmouth ever caught out of the pond. I didn't have a scale or measuring tape but this fish was definitely over 3 pounds:



So now I am incredibly happy that the pond we dedicated so much money and hard work into is producing big fish just like we planned! I am also incredibly jealous that my wife caught it and not me but thems the breaks.

So we call it a day and go to show the rest of the family the pictures of the new pond record. The next morning the kids can't wait to get out and catch more fish as soon as they are done breakfast. So we all head down there and on her first cast my wife proceeds to catch this monster which was definitely longer and bigger than the previous days record-setter and I would estimate it to be a hair under 4lbs:





In a jealous frenzy I proceed catch a 2 pounder and hook several between 10 and 14" for my kids to reel in. Then my daughter hooks the biggest YP ever caught out of the pond (she was afraid to touch it) and that was the best fish of the trip as far as I am concerned:



So it was a wonderful weekend and the pond has turned out better than I could have ever expected! Thanks to everyone here for all the guidance!!

Last edited by RockvilleMDAngler; 11/14/16 04:56 PM.

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Awesome! that is what it's all about....I am just starting a 1/2-3/4 acre pond and will be stocking SMB, HSB, YP , HBG... Looks like you have some great growth on those species. Will be reading through this thread for sure.


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Originally Posted By: beastman
Awesome! that is what it's all about....I am just starting a 1/2-3/4 acre pond and will be stocking SMB, HSB, YP , HBG... Looks like you have some great growth on those species. Will be reading through this thread for sure.


If you can get spotfin or satinfin shiners I would highly recommend them for a pond like yours. Obviously also golden shiners as they were really easy to establish and are self sustaining. If you plan on feeding buy feed trained fish, my YP and SMB totally ignore the pellets, in fact the pellets don't get eaten until they float to the shallows where the smaller golden shiners go to town....


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Yes, I hope to have all feed trained fish. GS and brooder GS, FHM, but not sure I will have the patience to let them sit for a season and establish, might just up the initial stock rate and given the predators will hopefully be pellet trained give them a fighting chance to establish some...

Reading through looks like you stocked the SMB naturally as you couldn't get a supplier for the qty you needed? What about the yellow perch were they not feed trained?


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The yellow perch were not feed trained. When I was looking for predators I checked EVERYWHERE and nobody had anything but LMB in stock. Finally in October a fish truck had yellow perch and I bought 50. I should have been more patient but honestly everything worked out well and I couldn't be happier. Patience is a virtue but when it comes to ponds it is a necessity. If you stock FHM and GS this spring and wait until the fall to stock predators you will be much happier in the long run. Keeping SMB feed trained is far from a sure thing so building the forage base is a much safer way to go.

FHM will reproduce VERY fast without predators. I stocked 10lbs in the spring and by June I had schools of them everywhere.

Last edited by RockvilleMDAngler; 11/15/16 12:19 PM.

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didn't you stock some LCS? an sign of them reproducing? or surviving?


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LCS were stocked into our forage pond a few years ago. I have seen a few spawning in the spring but I have yet to try to seine them up and stock into the main pond.


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