Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose regular striped bass

has anybody ever tried these in a pond?

i dont recall seeing any threads here discussing pros and cons of trying these fish as a top pond predator.

my questions for starters....can they handle similar temp ranges as HSB, do they freely recruit in small waters?

reason for asking: HSB are to my knowledge illegal to stock in CA ponds, especially those potentially connected to the "states waters".

thanks in advance.

My uncle had stocked 50 in his 2 acre lake a few years back. I have personally caught a few over the past two years. They seem to be doing well. The only thing is his pond is fed by a spring that flows over a waterfall and has cool water all year long.

thanks brian, good info.

i recalled george's excellent thread on HSB history

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=79011&fpart=1

which touched on some advantages of HSB over SB, but also reported on the success of many west coast SB fisheries in lakes and reservoirs.

i just dont recall any specific threads on SB in (small <5 acre) ponds and wonder if this is not a potential option for my situation down the road.

I fish for striped bass on a large lake in the summer and they are very sensitive to water temp (these are 30+ inch fish). If you leave them out of water for more than 2 minutes they are dead. I have put them in an aerated livewell and they are dead in under 10 minutes. I have caught little 8-10 inchers also and they do fine in the livewell.

Dave, Striped Bass are an anadromous species, in natural settings going from the ocean upstream to spawn, requiring a current to suspend the eggs until they hatch, so recruitment is questionable.



I do not recall prior discussion on SB in small ponds

I have been tempted to transfer a few small SB from Lake Texoma to our pond but have never seen a good reason to do so because IMO, HSB outfight SB and large size HSB stockers are readily available.

I have observed that in the hot summer months small SB are much more heat tolerant and active in shallow waters than larger SB, that are often times suspended in deep water at or right above the thermo cline

A TP&W biologist once told me it was nature’s way of keeping the big ones from eating the little ones.

If stocker size SB were available I would certainly try.



I agree with Brian, that SB as well as HSB have a low stress tolerance,and have to be resuscitated and quickly returned to the water if catch and release is intended.

thanks for the input george. there are at least two reservoirs somewhat near me (w/ in a couple hundred miles anyway) that are known for their SB fishery (New Hogan...a declining fishery i understand, and San Luis Reservoir being the big one....CA state record for landlocked SB = 67 lbs caught from the forebay area), these waters must be a portion of the SB stocking that yer article alluded to in yer HSB history post.

the fella that JHAP and i got our BG and RES from also raises SB. he asked me why i dont try them, i didnt have a good answer other than i wanted to go w/ just sunfish for a while.

in light of the fact that HSB are not readily available here (or legal to my knowledge) and there are no commercially available triploid LMB (good thread over there!.....and even if there were i'm sure they'd be illegal here too), perhaps SB are something to explore.

Dave,
To my knowledge the SB in San Luis Reservoir and the O'neal forebay are all pumped from the bay/delta via the California Aquaduct, they do not spawn in the them. As for New Hogan I believe they do spawn in that lake, I think.

I fished the forebay about 4 times in Dec. Some days were good, just nothing bigger than 4 lbs or so.

Here's my knowledge concerning striped bass, as it pertains to ponds.

1. Striped bass are often very active in cool and even cold water.

2. Striped bass become highly stressed in warm water, especially if oxygen levels are anything less than saturated.

3. Striped bass are more likely to fly to a neighboring pond than they are to reproduce in a small water body. Striped bass eggs must tumble in clean, oxygenated water for something like two days in order to hatch. In beautiful clean clear Lake McConaughy in Nebraska, which is 30,000 acres when full there is essentially no documented reproduction. Maybe there was one or two tiny year classes out of the last 40 years.

4. Striped bass are not known for their ability to use pellets, so it would be important that they have ample natural forage, in a pond with excellent water quality.

As is always the case, I'm sure there are some small water bodies that they could do nicely in, but only a fraction of the ponds that HSB could live.

You know, I saw the thread title "Regular Striped Bass", and I thought "Stripers live a lot longer than HSB; they probably do have to worry about staying regular."

i'm really pleased w/ the responses here thanks guys, so now there is a thread discussing SB in small ponds.

my water quality stays really nice w/ the aeration, but temps might pose a problem. if the SB could survive the worst summer patterns, if they are unable to recruit, and they had lots of natural forage......sounds like it could work well given you could manage the numbers properly (maybe like a "put and take" situation). i would think between 10 and 20 adult SBs could really dent a sunfish population in a pond that varies from .6 to 1 acres depending on season. its been widely discussed that the same could be accomplished w/ single sex lmb, but its the (pond owner's) success of single sexing that troubles me w/ that approach, and the uniqueness of using SB that attracts me.

i think this will be the true test season (second breeding season) to really find out if the GSF can be successful as top predator (given my pond conditions) or if the BG will overpopulate and stunt.....if unsuccessful, other methods will need to be implemented...these thoughts i'll add to my other thread.

edited post....pleased w/ the serious responses here anyways

I'll echo what a lot of folks have already said.

From my fishing experience, young, smaller SB seem to be pretty hardy and can handle temp changes pretty well. Older, larger SB seem to be practically dead by the time you have them off the hook.

Don't forget that a five pound SB has a bigger mouth than a 5 pound HSB, so if you managed to put the SB in an environment where they had a chance to feed and thrive, they'd likely be targeting larger prey.

their mouths are not as big as LMB though????

weissguy, that would be fine, what i am thinking would be along the lines of a put and take type predator management.

if one performed periodic stocking of SB in sub adult sizes, as they grew, it would keep pressure on a wider variety of prey sizes up to a point (the size of adults mouth), over which you'd have some nice sized surviving gills...any flaws in that logic?

No flaws that I can see. Personally I'd love to see you try it. You could be a pioneer in pond management!

yer too kind BC, i dont know if pioneer is the correct word managing for large GSF....maybe outcast, or eccentric is better suited.

we'll give the large GSF a chance this year and see what happens with the GSF, BG, and RES recruitment, status of gam population, summer drawdown, etc.

if it fails though, i would really be interested in pursuing something other than standard lmb/sunfish....and SB may fit that bill....short of actually getting JHAP up here w/ his seine and manually removing BG...

For some reason I thought you were talking about Spotted Bass before Dave. One of the fish suppliers down by Mtalley was pushing Sacramento Perch - from what I have read they get to be a nice size also.

It would be easy to remove BG from your pond. Heck they practically jump onto a lure all by themselves as it is. We must have caught close to 20 in the time that we were fishing. (Ok, I freely admit it I caught about 30% of what Dave caught). We just need to have a marathon fishing session during the summer.

Or another direction you could go is to stock one really big predator.....

I have been buying from Golden State Bait near Merced.

Now you know, within an order of magnitude, what it's like to fish with Condello.

Have hybrid striped bass been found to cause cancer by the state of California and that's why they are illegal?

Haha.... Now THAT'S funny!

yup, har har...he's not that far off though, the CAL EPA and fish and game post warnings all the time about eating too many fish from certain water bodies out here including our delta which includes the stripers on that restricted diet.....mercury, pesticides, other stuff....preganant women, people w/ liver problems, small children.....etc.... shouldnt eat fish from the delta, etc, etc, etc...

i think the HSB are banned because EPA and F&G fear them as genetically enhanced exotic species, and dont understand they cant recruit...mtalley, if you know more about whether HSB are legal or illegal in CA, i'd like to hear (thanks BTW for that info on the o'neil forebay fish...i didnt know they did that).

Died,
I spoke to my Uncle this morning about the Stripers in the lake and he said he caught one the other day. He said it was 28 inches long and about 10 pounds. He said his son got a picture of it before he released it. I will try and get the picture to post for you. The pond he has them in is about 1 acre and around 18Ft deep at the maximum, but like I said the water flow going into it from the spring house is amazing. I will have to head down there and get some pictures. His spring house will be the envy of CECIL for sure. I am jealous every time I go there myself.
He use to have 30 inch brook and brown trout swimming all over the place but hasnt stocked it in recent years so I figure they all died or were killed by the Herons. I put three Koi in there a few years back and they are atleast 15 pound now.

Don't mess with Kahlifoania or our govenator will call your governer a girly man and you don't want that.