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I thought none existed in my .5 acre farm pond but I was wrong. Caught a BIG one yesterday. Larger than any pictures I've seen. At first glance I thought it was a tilapia!

I do not want My little pond to be full of them. I want a BG/LMB/CC pond.

Aside from a drawdown and reset, is a trap a decent option?
The one I caught yesterday was a monster.
9-10" and thick as heck.
The trap would need to be a big one.

Last edited by Clay N' Pray; 07/22/18 04:10 PM.
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They are aggressive - fish for them as well.
















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That's a big greenie for sure!!

I haven't been on the site very long, but here's my $.02. I've had GSF in my little pond almost since the day it started filling. I now have a very diverse mix of them and other panfish species as I've decided to not fight mother nature. I say that because thru all my reading and limited effort to remove them, the only way to get them out completely is to kill the whole pond and start over, but the odds of them showing up again down the road is definitely in the fish's favor, not yours. They are very prolific, even with a single spawn cycle and seem to come from nowhere.

I personally have come to admire the fish. Their mouth gage is large enough to take on small fry and help with crowd control on the BG. They are very aggressive, almost comparable to LMB. They eat just as good as BG, IMO.

You can fight her, or you can accept her. Either way, mother nature is gonna have her way. Even the professional hatcheries can't control their existence, thus the HBG creation, which may be where yours came from.

Again....my $.02, probably not worth that.

Good luck with whatever path you decide to take.


.10 surface acre pond, 10.5 foot deep. SW LA. The epitome of a mutt pond. BG, LMB, GSF, RES, BH, Warmouth, Longear Sunfish, Gambusia,Mud Minnows, Crappie, and now shiners!!...I subscribe!!
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I'm gonna throw flies at them every chance I get. I'm hoping to get the larger ones (that the bass can't eat) culled by flyrod. The bass and CC at least have a chance at eating the small ones.

I'm not going down without a fight.
I have a 4wt flyrod and a nice assortment of Chernobyl ants.
I can think of no better excuse to buy beer.


Half acre 30 year old farm pond, Mebane NC. Aeration & feeder.
LMB, CC, SC, BG, HBC, two no account welfare carp and nine seasonal Tilapia that all the other fish are terrified of.

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Minnow traps baited with food work well to remove 2-3" GSF. You can enlarge the hole in the trap to 1.5 to 2" but you have to check the trap 15 to 30 minutes after baiting because with the larger hole the fish can find their way back out as soon as the feed is gone.

I have not used a larger trap for a while to try and get them but I have one and I should try that in my forage pond where I try to keep the GSF numbers down because I raise RES fingerlings in that pond. Hook and line works well for the larger ones.


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I'm confused as to why so many people think that GSF will find their way into your pond by themselves. They don't get there unless they can swim from point A to point B (your pond) or a human puts them there. They can't walk! I guess it is possible that hybrid bluegill could revert back in subsequent generations to pure GSF so that is a third option.

But I agree with all the other points about them being fun to catch and good to eat. But they also were not in your original plan. If you must remove them all you would have to drain and start over. I'm not sure you can ever be confident that by catching and trapping that they are all gone.

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My pond is a year old and already has lots of GSF including YOY. They most likely came from the two ponds above mine. Likely during the 4" and 6" rainfall events last August. Same with BH.

I suggest building a couple of cloverleaf traps with 1/4" hardware cloth to enable catching smaller fish to see just what is hatching out in your pond. I am tossing out the 1-3" GSF when caught but don't have any expectations of eliminating GSF. Just trying to help getting my BG and RES established then LMB this fall. Once they are established they will dominate over the GSF.


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Originally Posted By: canyoncreek
I'm confused as to why so many people think that GSF will find their way into your pond by themselves. They don't get there unless they can swim from point A to point B (your pond) or a human puts them there. They can't walk! I guess it is possible that hybrid bluegill could revert back in subsequent generations to pure GSF so that is a third option.

But I agree with all the other points about them being fun to catch and good to eat. But they also were not in your original plan. If you must remove them all you would have to drain and start over. I'm not sure you can ever be confident that by catching and trapping that they are all gone.

I disagree. Alot of ponds end up with fish that nobody stocked and had no other way of getting in.

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Originally Posted By: kswaterfowler
Originally Posted By: canyoncreek
I'm confused as to why so many people think that GSF will find their way into your pond by themselves. They don't get there unless they can swim from point A to point B (your pond) or a human puts them there. They can't walk! I guess it is possible that hybrid bluegill could revert back in subsequent generations to pure GSF so that is a third option.

But I agree with all the other points about them being fun to catch and good to eat. But they also were not in your
original plan. If you must remove them all you would have to drain and start over. I'm not sure you can ever be confident that by catching and trapping that they are all gone.

I disagree. Alot of ponds end up with fish that nobody stocked and had no other way of getting in.


Yup!! I've got a prime example sitting 40 feet from my front door. No ponds or streams any where near me, but they dang sure found their way in there, along with the BH. The only direct stocking was done by me with fish I caught/trapped myself.


.10 surface acre pond, 10.5 foot deep. SW LA. The epitome of a mutt pond. BG, LMB, GSF, RES, BH, Warmouth, Longear Sunfish, Gambusia,Mud Minnows, Crappie, and now shiners!!...I subscribe!!
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there is no spontaneous conception. Just because you can't say how they got in there doesn't mean that they got in there spontaneously.

If you have one fish (GSF or bullhead) it is possible that a heron regurgitated during a fly over. That is possible because it can be witnessed and therefore known for sure.

If you have more than 2 then it is unlikely that 2 herons regurgitated but it is pretty unlikely.

If you have more than 2 or more than a dozen then they got there because you stocked them (unintentionally of course), someone else bucket stocked them (very common although we would like to ignore the fact that this can happen), or they swam in.

Of course if you witness other portals of entry then we can be more confident about other possibilities.

otherwise disagreeing doesn't help.

The unwanted fish are innocent until proven guilty smile

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Can't ducks and water fowl bring eggs in on their feathers?

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Mostly, that has been discredited.


It's not about the fish. It's about the pond. Take care of the pond and the fish will be fine. PB subscriber since before it was in color.

Without a sense of urgency, Nothing ever gets done.

Boy, if I say "sic em", you'd better look for something to bite. Sam Shelley Rancher and Farmer Muleshoe Texas 1892-1985 RIP
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Originally Posted By: Dave Davidson1
Mostly, that has been discredited.


I don't think it's been proven either way, to be honest. Old wives tale or not, greenies sure do seem to be masters of miraculously materializing. Let's not beat that horse again tho.


.10 surface acre pond, 10.5 foot deep. SW LA. The epitome of a mutt pond. BG, LMB, GSF, RES, BH, Warmouth, Longear Sunfish, Gambusia,Mud Minnows, Crappie, and now shiners!!...I subscribe!!
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Originally Posted By: Mike Whatley
Originally Posted By: Dave Davidson1
Mostly, that has been discredited.


I don't think it's been proven either way, to be honest. Old wives tale or not, greenies sure do seem to be masters of miraculously materializing. Let's not beat that horse again tho.


They sure do and it all can't be due to bucket stocking. I saw them show up in a small pond built for cows out in an 80 acre field. The pond gets no runoff at all and GSF were apparently all that was in it. A drainage ditch a couple miles from me drains off about 180 acres. I've hunted that ground for years and there is absolutely no other BOW shedding water into that ditch upstream. None from the south either for at least a mile when it empties into a larger creek that probably does have some fish in it. The ditch is dry except after a big rain and there is a hole about a foot deep where the culvert goes under a gravel road. I like to stop and look in it once in a while. All I've ever seen in it are GSF in the 4 inch bracket. I guess they are swimming upstream over a mile and getting left in the hole when the water drops.

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Back to the subject at hand Clay, I dont think, from reading your previous posts, that you necessarily want to drain or kill the pond and start over, but that is probably the only sure fire way to elimenate them and be 99.999% sure you've removed them completely. Whether they ever show up again would be anyone's quess. If you chose that route, I'd be inspecting EVERY fish you stocked, regardless of species, to try to prevent their return, especially if your supplier deals in HBG.

BTW...where'd you find your Chernoble Ants?

Last edited by Mike Whatley; 07/24/18 07:56 PM.

.10 surface acre pond, 10.5 foot deep. SW LA. The epitome of a mutt pond. BG, LMB, GSF, RES, BH, Warmouth, Longear Sunfish, Gambusia,Mud Minnows, Crappie, and now shiners!!...I subscribe!!
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I don’t have any greenies and I feel left out.....

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Originally Posted By: Mike Whatley
Back to the subject at hand Clay, I dont think, from reading your previous posts, that you necessarily want to drain or kill the pond and start over, but that is probably the only sure fire way to elimenate them and be 99.999% sure you've removed them completely. Whether they ever show up again would be anyone's quess. If you chose that route, I'd be inspecting EVERY fish you stocked, regardless of species, to try to prevent their return, especially if your supplier deals in HBG.

BTW...where'd you find your Chernoble Ants?


I did purchase HBG from a fish truck this spring. They were 3-4" fingerlings.
No way in heck the one I caught was a fingerling just 3 months ago.
It was a full grown monster.

I'm into the pond, stocking $ wise, way too deep for a reset. Plus I just don't think destroying the entire food chain is a good idea for my particular pond.
It's already infertile and I imagine a reset would just make it worse.

It was probably already in the BOW when I started this adventure.


I got the ants from Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00IO9QP4E

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Last edited by Clay N' Pray; 07/25/18 07:34 AM.

Half acre 30 year old farm pond, Mebane NC. Aeration & feeder.
LMB, CC, SC, BG, HBC, two no account welfare carp and nine seasonal Tilapia that all the other fish are terrified of.


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