Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Help Raising Walleye

Hi. i'm looking for any information on raising walleye and other fish such as fhm, bluegills, perch for sale or just stocking purposes for my other ponds. i live in nw iowa and have access to many ponds large and small, with quality springs and water supply. looking in to selling some fingerlings for cash. any money in it? also would just like to monkey around with stocking different fish in ponds. we have tried stocking walleye. they seem to grow fast and get large. so that's what spured my curiousity. thanks for any info. this is a great website and magazine looks cool.

outdoorsmanhc welcome to PB and thanks for joining in. Yours is a good question for discussion .

The Aquaculture Network Information Center -- http://www.aquanic.org/

Walleye -- http://www.aquanic.org/beginer/we/we.htm

This is where to get all you need about eyes wrt your question.

I am also interested in this fish for our small 50 acre lake. There seems to be a lot of debate about what kind of water this fish can survive in. I'm farmilure with their limitations relative to spawing requirements, but the guys who are selling them in southern michigan location are saying that the walleye is a great fish for eating up over populated pan fish, which is what we have in our lake. They are saying that they will eat everything smaller than about 4". Others say the lake is too warm in the summer and they will die. ???? Given that they have a life span of up to five years I have proposed a gradual anual introduction (on going) of about 5 fish/acre. Any ideas on this?

Mike

Don't know where you are in the state but I'm about 12 miles North of the Ohio border in Lenawee County. I put 150 8-10 inch Eyes in my 6 1/2 acre pond in '97. The largest one caught was about 3 years ago at 31 1/2 inches. Didn't catch any last year but then didn't target them while fishing either. They may have just died of old age as we probably didn't take out more than a dozen over the years.

I belive Bill Cody told me they could possibly live 10-12 years in a pond. I think anything up to 6" or a little over would be closer to what they fed on. As far as being too warm unless you are very shallow you should not have any problems.

Small?? 50 acres?? You should be fine. Have fun.

Dan

TMK - If you stock I suggest you follow Dan's path and stock walleye (WE) at 8"-10" minimum size. Better sizes are 10-12". Be prepared these will be pricey. Smaller sizes of 4"-8", will be readily be eaten by bass and other walleye despite what hatcheries will tell you.

""They are saying that they will eat everything smaller than about 4"."" This is hatchery sales hype. Remember hatcheries are in the business to sell fish. The size of forage fish that the walleye will eat will depend on the size of the walleye and the type of forage fish. Larger WE will eat larger forage, but numerous research foraging studies of WE have shown that adults (16"-26") most often consume the smaller more narrow bodied 3"-4" fish. Although keep inmind that WE like many other fish are opportunists when it comes to feeding. WE will gorge on 1" mayflies when the hatch is occurring. Obviously a 4" shiner, 4" y.perch and 4" bass will be much easier to swallow and be preferred compared to a 4" Bgill.

The WE will live in the water temps of your southern MI lake. In reality, the stocking of 8"-12" LM bass would do much, much more overall benefit to more quickly see control or affects on your small overabundant panfish than WE. I thnk survival of LMB would be better than WE in a lake that already has LMB. Plus the LMB would spawn to create more future predators and probably be cheaper than buying 10"-12" walleye. Unless you have fishermen with fat wallets that absolutly love & have to have walleye, I suggest you focus for efforts on stocking subadult LMB instead of WE. Keep in mind that you need to be stocking 8"-12" LMB and not fingerlings or 4"-6" bass. Smaller bass are too small and survival not good enough to be a really cost effective solution in your particular situation.

I have heard the LMB suggestion also, but it puzzels me because our lake also has an abundance of small LMB. Thay seem to be stunted along with the BG's. Last summer a cpl of guys cought about 40 LMB in about 2 hours and none of them were more than about 9 or 10 inches. We used to get some realy large LMB in years gone by. we have checked the water chemistry and it seems to more or less typical for Southern Mich lakes.

The most obvious change in our lake seems to be the lack of large preditor fish like northern pike or LARGE LMB. Most of our bass fisherman realy don't want to restock pike feeling that they will eat all the bass befor they eat the BG's.

TMK, the stunting of LMB as you describe in your lake also impacts the forage base at certain slot sizes. Most likely, those 9-10" LMB simply don't have enough food to eat. Three and four inch fish would be their target eats.

I'm just guessing, but I think your forage base needs bolstered and reestablished before you add more predators.

BTW, I've been internally simmering over your calling your 50 acre lake "small."

Internally jealous may be a better description.

TMK - Sunil has good points. If the lake has lots of 9"-10" LMB then there should not be lots of 2.5"-3" forage fish. I am getting some mixed information in your quote above that says ""walleye is a great fish for eating up over populated pan fish, which is what we have in our lake. They are saying that they will eat everything smaller than about 4".""

What is the size of your over populated panfish?.?

I think it is not 2.5"-3.5" panfish. Over abundant sizes are probably more like 4"-6". If so, then it takes 13"-17" bass to prey on that size of panfish.

If your over populated panfish are 4"-6" then stocking walleye or more bass will not help. 10"-12" walleye will be eating the same items as 9"-11" bass.

So far, it sounds to me like your lake has to too many 9"-10" bass and too few of the 2.5-3.5" panfish needed to get the bass growing to the next size class of 11"-14" bass that will then be eating 3.3"-4.3" panfish. If this assumption is true then there needs to be a concerted effort to thin out (harvest) 9"-10" bass. There are past posts here that provide guidence as to how many small bass per acre that need to be removed so remaining bass get growing to the next size group (12"-15"). It is a common problem for a pond/lake to be "bass heavy" in one size group where they then over-eat the food source and their growth becomes stuck at one size category.

Do you have any catch records, seining/nettng,trapping, or electroshocking data as to what sizes of panfish are most abundant in your lake? What is the size structure of the panfish populations in our lake? . Example. If "you" would go out with a No. 10 hook baited with wax worm or garden worm fished under a bobber and caught 200 panfish what size would each fish be? These data would also tell you a lot as to what the size structure of your bass population was like in the lake.

I think Bill's suggestion is a good one to start some "catch records", and I have talked to one of our most frequant fisherman and he has agreed to start recording his catches.

I have also observed that most of the panfish do seem to be in the 4" to 6" size w/o an obvious abondance of the smaller sizes.

Also, the practice of Catch and Release has been extreamly popular on this lake for years. Perhaps we should start keeping the smaller bass to thin out the LMB population so the remaining LMB will have more to eat and grow larger?

TMK, yes. If you want to have bigger LMB, then you need to be removing a lot of LMB.

This may not be a small task with your lake being 50 acres.

You may be looking to take out at least 30-50 LMB, say under 14", per acre. That's 1,500 to 2,500 LMB!!! Depending on the amount of actual overpopulation of LMB, that number could go higher than 50 LMB/acre. Also consider that each year, how many more thousands of LMB will be born and end up surviving?

Keep in mind, I don't know all the details of your pond's
ecosystem, nor am I educationally qualified to make recommendations.

With a lake of that size, I wonder if some higher line predators might be interesting. Maybe some tiger muskie seeing as they don't spawn.

TMK,
Sunil is on track. 2000 lbs of bass to be taken out is a daunting task when your catching 8-10oz bass. You may consider having your lake electro fished. A shock boat could do the job in short order and get your predator base back in order.

The best way to know if your bass are healthy and growing is to measure and weigh your catches. If they are skinny, there are too many predators. If they are fat, then all is well. Below is a chart that might help

How about a fishing tournament with a couple of boy scout troops. My cousin was in the scouts and he got a fishing merit badge. It would be a win-win situation. You get excess fish removed and the kids get a merit badge. You could also give a prize to the kid that catches the most fish.

Yeah, the chance to fish there every weekend for the next year, lol.

that was my question also what about northern pike or tiger muskey, they will surely help this the herd???

sounds like more like a small lake than a large pond!!!

there are several hathceries in iowa to get walleye from
I bought mine at beemer hatchery in bedford, iowa

randy is a great guy!!

there is also a hatchery in montour ,iowa(northstar hatchery)
pretty nice folk too!!

Somebody in Iowa was selling 4 to 6 inch walleyes that were feed trained a year or two ago. I posted it on here. It was in the Aquanic classified section. They had several thousand. It would have been fun to put some in a monoculture pond and see what they would do on feed.