Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Are these warmouth or some hybrid?

I have a 3 acre pond that was finished in June 2015 and was stocked with FHM and GSH at full pool that month.I then had 1200 BG and 800 RES stocked in October 2015. I stocked 300 LMB in April 2016.
We just have started to do some fishing the last few weeks and are mainly catching fish like the pictures below.These are extremely healthy and really thick.I doubt these fish were bucket stocked.Could they have been missed when my F1 were stocked at 2" long?Is it possible to get this much growth in 10 months?I have looked at the topography maps to try to figure out if it is possible they came from another body of water.Most years fish migration would be almost impossible but this year we have had torrential downpours and my pond has a large watershed.
Are these fish going to negatively effect my pond goals?My LMB are now in the 10-12" range with RW's averaging around 150%.The few BG I have caught are at 115% plus RW.I hand feed pellets 3 to 5 times a week.What kind of spawning success will these fish have? Should I cull them ASAP?Will they compete with LMB for forage?
These toads are a blast to catch on 4lb test and an ultralight but it is not worth keeping them if the are going to ruin our fishing long term.

[img]http://i1381.photobucket.com/albums/ah23...p;1473091884649[/img]

It looks like a green sunfish to me.

First the disclaimer. I'm not an expert and have only been actively managing ponds for three years. With that said here is my opinion.

They look like GSF to me, but not being familiar with Warmouth I could be wrong. They look like my GSF.

Based on their size, I would say them coming from another BOW would be unlikely unless that high water event was close to your stocking time. If the high water event was more recent it would be more likely for small fish to enter your pond rather than that size unless you had something like six inches of a foot of water entering. Then larger fish would be more possible. It is the little buggers that really move up and down stream in unbelievably shallow water. I had small BG in my back yard this year, left in the grass as the water receded. Based on their size and stocking time, my best guess is they slipped in with your original stocking. 2" fish can be tough to identify for anyone other than an expert and even the experts might have trouble if they have a thousand fish to sort through and get them in the water before they die. My bet is you unknowingly stocked them.

Yes they will compete with your LMB. Because of the large size of their mouth and aggressive nature they will eat a lot of what a LMB of the same size would eat. If LMB is your main or only goal I would cull them. Particularly where they are that big after only a year. If this was three years down the road and your BG and LMB were well established they would be less worrisome. In my non-expert opinion.

You did not say where you are at. From previous threads on the subject of GSF it appears they are more of a problem the further north you go. The reasoning being GSF mostly spawn once a year and BG have multiple spawns. In the north BG might only spawn a couple times where in the south four of more. The high rate of reproduction of the BG simply allow them to out spawn the GSF in the south so the BG eventually win the competition game unless there are specific conditions where the GSF have the advantage over the BG.

Some guys actually like the dreaded GSF and I have actually been stocking a "few" in my main pond. BUT....... my BG are well established.

You can kind of think of the GSF being a LMB that never gets over a pound or two. They essentially have a mouth the same size as a LMB of the same length. So they compete with LMB of that size.

If you like feisty pan fish, and it appears your other fish are doing fine, you might (GASP!) even want to return a few of the best ones to your BOW. But that is pretty much heresy talk so I could get blackballed for saying it.

My other observation with GSF is you will catch a disproportion of them while angling for BG. In other words it is my contention that if you had exactly 100 BG and 100 GSF in a pond all the same size, when you went fishing you would not catch half GSF and half BG but more something like 2 GSF for every one BG. GSF are very aggressive and are readily catch-able. Therefore you may have fewer of them than you think simply because they are easy to catch. Within about a years time I "fished out" the 50 or so HBG (BGxGSF cross)that slipped in accidentally in my original stocking. They were enough more aggressive that after the first year of fishing and removing them I rarely ever caught another. Since then I have actually decided I like the hybrids and have been raising and stocking them (my pond primary goal is a panfish pond though, not LMB centered)

If you do not want more of them, cull them. If you like them and feel the other fish are established so as to not hurt those populations then keep them. If LMB are your only reason for living, the LMB will love them for lunch but your small LMB will have them as direct competition, unlike the BG that have much smaller mouths.

How's that for a non-committal answer for what you should do with them?

Greenies. At least in the absence of DNA analysis.

Well there is three votes for GSF, if that means anything.

There has been a lot of ink spilled about them (most of it neagative ) on these pages of PBF. Here is some additional reading Tubguy to make your eyes water and help you understand the much maligned (likely rightly so) GSF.

100% GSF

GSF

Thanks for the quick reply John and Snrub!I also have some with a red ear tab in my album picks.I believe we will try to cull the GSF!! I thought they were a little too thick for being greenies.
Snrub I live in Southern Indiana about 65 miles north of KY.We are about as far north as Sparkplug but Tony is about 50 miles west of me.
I would like for my sons to be able to catch some LMB in the 3 to 5 pound range and some nice sunfish while eating a mess of BG 5-6 times a year.I am hoping the GSF did not get too much of a headstart!I was hoping to have some pure strain BG that is why I purchased my fish from a reputable fish farm.

Most GSF will have a translucent orangish border on their opercular tab. A few years ago it was hard for me to keep from being confused with a RES because of this.

But the GSF border will be more of a translucent nature where the RES will be either a solid orange or solid red. Also the GSF border will kind of wrap around the tab more whereas the RES tends to be mostly on the end of it.

I am getting a bunch of natural hybrids out of my sediment pond now and some even in my forage pond which is SUPPOSED to only have RES. With very small fish and RES crossed with GSF it gets difficult for me to identify. But generally if I get them side by side, I can see the GSF characteristics in the hybrid and none in the pure RES.

GSF will be thick. Much thicker than a BG. Much more like a LMB. The GSF will not be as tall as a BG, but a lot thicker.

Where these are not your target fish, I would just cull the ones you catch. You are going to have more of them even if you do cull and by not culling you might end up with a lot more than you want. So the safe thing for your goals is to cull, in my opinion.

If you catch smaller ones (sized so your largest LMB can eat them) you can clip their tail fin off with scissors and put them back in for LMB food. With the tail fin clipped they can not swim very fast, swim erratically, and that makes them easy targets for LMB. I have tail clipped hundreds of GSF and have never re-caught one. So they get eaten pretty quick. It is a way of recycling the fish food you have been feeding the GSF. They are definitely chow hounds.

Good luck and have fun!

Well instead of killing off the whole pond I think we will boil them in oil a few at a time.Hopefully they have only spawned once due to my location.

Sparky,
Do you have a relative weight chart for GSF?

The 1st fish pictured appears to have the most GSF genetics. The last fish picture (3rd one) of 'tubguy' doesn't look pure GSF to me. I think there are a few other sunfish genes in it probably bluegill. Also notice that the fish in the 1st picture has more yellow in the pelvic fins, less yellow is in pelvic fins of the 2nd fish and even less yellow in the 3rd fish. To me the less yellow indicates more genetic influence from another sunfish species. Actually the 2nd fish picture to me has some hybrid influence.

Pure green sunfish normally have more of the emerald streaks on the gill cover.

GSF will grow to be wide across the back especially when they get over 7".

Now that is funny. Most anglers might rather use a picture of a GSF for a dart board or shot gun target practice, but I don't recall anyone asking for a relative weight chart.

If JHAP was still around, he might of had one.

You know what people say,"when life gives you lemons"...
Well I figure I really don't have the patience to start over at this point.Maybe a few years from now but my boys are 16 and 12 and we need to get fishing.I had dreamed of catching saucer sized bluegill under the shade of an old cedar tree, but maybe someday.
Will these GSF be a curse or a blessing? I guess "it all depends".

My old pond is doing fine with them.

Where I think they really give fits is if a person thinks he only has FHM in a pond, then later when he puts BG and RES comes to the realization that not only there were FHM but GSF that have already spawned. If the GSF get the jump on the BG and enough are big enough to eat all the stocking size BG.............. then they can be a real problem. Cause if they ate all the BG and RES fry, well all you end up with is GSF. That is a little like what happened in my old pond. The GSF got the jump on everything else. I got ahead of them by stocking larger BG and LMB. Now the pond is fine.

But by the sound of things that is not your situation. Sounds like you have good BG and LMB, so I think you will be fine by just weeding out what GSF you catch.

I don't recall ever seeing a Wr chart for GSF. Be interesting to compare, though.

This thread, and a few very similar ones posted recently, only serve to illustrate just how confusing the world of lepomis crosses can be. Trying to arrive at an accurate pedigree from a few online photos is tough. Adding in the fact that different folks see different things in the same photo, allowing for geography, age of the fish, water clarity where the fish was caught, time of year, and the natural diversity among individuals of the same species, and the notion of "pure" gets awfully farfetched.

I tend to remember how HBG got such a bad rap in the first place......folks complaining about them "reverting" back to GSF. We know that's scientifically impossible, but if it walks, looks, and quacks like a mallard, am I justified in advertising Peking Duck as the house specialty?

I say eat those GSF looking fish. Maybe with a sweet bean sauce.

GSF Std Wts by David Willis. Pond Boss Mag Sept/Oct 2013. Pg 24

Other sunfishes

Nov/Dec 2013 is the earliest issue available online that I can see. Can you post the RW chart?

In addition to what you said Tony, I have found that one of my fish has certain features that I think will make good discussion so I take a picture to post. Then when I get the picture downloaded and look at it again the features that seemed so prominent viewing the fish live do not seem to be so certain in the picture. This has happened to me several times. I'm sure a fish is xxxxxx. Then I view the picture and am not so sure.

Very high % GSF IMO. Although I note several studies indicate the difficulty in finding 100% pure GSF populations and thus wide variance in the sex ratio of HBG crosses from several sources (98% down to 66% males).

What % of BG to GSF do you catch from the pond ?

I found a pond with only CNBG and Warmouth in it, I have fish it extensively , along with cast net sampling ...The pond is pretty small. It has lots of hybrids CNBG X Warmouth, I took lots of pictures.

Ill try to get around to posting them soon

One of my shallow duck ponds was overrun during a flood and warmouth got in. We had a blast catching them when they got big. The pond experiences periodic fish kills as it shallow was not intended as a fish pond, but a few LMB have grown pretty large between "purges". It is plant covered most of the summer, but is fishable long enough to have fun once in a while.

This may help - lepomis id chart

Very high % GSF IMO. Although I note several studies indicate the difficulty in finding 100% pure GSF populations and thus wide variance in the sex ratio of HBG crosses from several sources (98% down to 66% males).


Ewest that is what has me concerned! Currently we are catching about 80% GSF.I have been using some fairly large hooks though.We have been catching about as many LMB as BG.

GSF are aggressive biters thus generally they are easy to catch. This character makes them as hybrids easy to catch fish.

Can you guess at the % difference between what you catch and what you see/observe in the water GSF to BG ?

Ewest I would say that I see more BG when hand feeding and walking the bank.I do see some GSF hiding in the crevices in the riprap.Like Bill Cody said they are really aggressive so I see them trying to ambush minnows and hogging the pellets.