Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat WILL FISH APPEAR IN A FISHLESS POND????

Wasn't sure where to put this question, but here goes. We had this ongoing dispute at work yesterday (and seems like we all got on the internet looking up answers of which, of course, we came up with conflicting answers). What is your observation, knowledge or thought on the following?

"If you build a new pond and neither your nor anyone else puts any fish in it, will fish eventually be there?"

1. Most of us thought that yes, they would appear as birds would either carry fish or the fish eggs over to the pond via feet or mouth.
2. One person went to the State site where it said this was untrue and a myth.

Of course, I told them I would ask POND BOSS as there is nothing more true than a bunch of 'tried and true'; experiences or knowledge from our experts.

SO, what do y'all think? Will fish show up in a fishless pond??? HHUUUMMM????

Mark

Mother nature has ways of moving fish around. They can come from a pond that is overflowing up stream and from the pond below when your spillway is overflowing..

The POND BOSS BOB LUSK, told me one time that fish come from fish and not birds.

Otto

I think it is possible. However, it is also possible for me to buy one lottery ticket and become fabulously wealthy without ever working a day in my life.

If you think about the overwhelming odds against a fish egg ever becoming a fish, even under ideal conditions, the odds are staggering.

I heard that they stick to duck feet and feathers. About 15 years ago, we sacrificed a duck and tried it with BG eggs. They didn't stick.

If you believe that the stork brings babies, I gues they could also bring fish.

Mark,

It's not a myth.

Of course A pond certainly won't stock itself in a short time frame. However, there is no debate that birds move gambusia around. I've seen that with my own eyes. I've also observed 1 bird harassing another, causing it to drop a fish. There's no debating that, because I observed it. All the controversy comes about because the doubters are thinking of a lot of fish in a short time frame. That is ignoring the most important tool of nature, which is time. Given countless opportunities and countless days, unlikely events become inevitable.

Dave, if you play the lottery for 60,000,000 years, I guarantee you will win it. Bet?

I've always wondered whether some birds have the instinct to move fish to a pond to create a source of food.

Also, I don't think much of the fish egg idea; I think it is more the moving of actual fish. And I also think that it would be isolated events, therefore the chance of a a human seeing it would be less likely there as to why most of us have not seen it first hand.

EDIT: I believe that birds do drop things by accident. I didn't mean to suggest that bobad or Overton were saying that birds intentionally dropped fish.

Sunil,

I won't go quite so far as to say birds "farm" fish. (although it's possible that 60 million years of evolution may favor that behavior)

What I observed was nothing more than 1 bird trying to pirate another bird's catch. I've seen that happen on 2 occasions inland, and many times around the seashore.

The sticking points are time and intent. When we say "birds transfer fish to unstocked ponds", some people get a very unrealistic vision of birds deliberately and methodically seeding a pond. When they say it doesn't happen, they're correct in what they're saying. But that's not what most of us are saying. We're saying that over time, fish are incidentally introduced into ponds by birds. Deliberate or incidental, it doesn't matter. It only takes 2 egg-laying fish or 1 live bearer and it's a done deal.

Sometimes I think my fish gave me a virus that created all this digging and feeding behavior I've been experiencing.

Honestly, tornadoes can transfer fish (and frogs and cows and ...) as well. Another low-probability method.

Sorry bobad, you are right. I read my post again and it made it seem like I was saying you had seen what I was suggesting. My fault.

I didn't mean that anyone was endorsing my first comment.

Well, another thought, I never had the first frog and now i got zillions (of course, they're on land so that doesn't count). Still trying analyze the fish thing. If there were a stream or such nearby and it overflowed but then that's probably like the tornado idea. I'd say 9 out of 10 of us were hung on the bird carrying thing, does that tell you what most people probably believe? Food for thought though.

On the pond side, my pond has been very quiet this week, especially today,we're seeing fish beds starting to be mad, no fish yet, spawning must be near (I forgot to check the temperature of the water.

Likelyhood of a bird moving fish is very low probability, but I suppose not impossible. I have two ponds that were stocked 3 and 10 yrs ago. One pond has just shiners and other pond has just primarily yellow perch and 3 species of forage fish. Both ponds are within 60-90 ft of a creek. After routinely sampling these ponds, I have no other fish in the ponds besides the ones that were originally stocked. I received a call today from a guy that was developing a panfish only pond. Neighbor kids told him they stocked some bass in his pond; that is where most fish contamination comes from - "do gooders" - human sources and human errors.

I have heard of fish and other critters traveling through springs or other underground water sources, of course, not very large critters.

This has got to be the best site on the whole Internet.

If it didn't take me so long to read all of the past posts that would be where all my free time would be spent.

OTTO

My guess would be that most fish are introduced from both upstream and downstream during heavy rain events. The last time we had heavy rainfall here I saw small fish that had swam upstream for hundreds of yards to end up in my girl's pond site. When the water returned to normal levels they were stranded in some small pools. It seems like fish instinctively move to new waters when the opportunity presents itself.

Birds that fish ponds will bring in eggs on their feet. Turtles will also bring them in.

One word... herons. If you see them, you can count on having hundreds of fish within 2-3 years. Trust me, I have seen it in my pond.

I threw 2 fish (different species) in their when I first built it. Two years later when I pumped it out to do a major overhaul I had hundreds of fish in there.

Everytime I saw that blue heron trying to fish my pond with only 2 fish I put in there it made me laugh. Little did I know he introduced a number of different species into the pond and created his own private fishing hole.

This is always an interesting topic, seems either you believe or you don't, with not much in between. For me the oddest thing is I am usually a non conspiracy kind of guy, but I believe that fish get imported. And it would not be beyond belief that a GBH could create his own habitat. It defies almost all rules of nature, it is too big to survive in an urban environment, yet like the coyote it doesn't seem to know that. It must taste really bad and have little fear.

The turtle thing I had not thought about,but they come and go in my pond frequently.

My other thought is that there maybe some fish that are more adaptable than others. We have local fish that live in mud without water for months on end, why is it not possible that some fish eggs survive out of water for a while?

I'm not buying the fish egg on bird feet theory. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but I think it would be extremely rare. I think someone already mentioned that a fish egg doesn't even have a good chance of surviving under normal conditions. This scenario puts it into astronomical porportions:

*Egg is laid (and may or may not have been fertilized)

*Egg is dislodged by a wading bird (likely mechanical damage)

*Egg travels out of water for a distance (exposure to air weakens defenses/shock from temp changes)

*Egg is shaken off the bird foot (more likely mechanical damage)

*Egg falls to the pond bottom (probable predation by insects, crustaceans, bacteria, fungus, etc)

*Egg hatches (still open to predation, must have an opposite sex/same species fish introduced in the same way, and they must live to maturity to reproduce)

The odds seem staggering to me.

OTOH, if you have a heavy inflow or outflow of water you could have thousands of small fish introduced into your pond in a day. Some of these fish could be large enough to spawn.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it. (until I see more evidence of course)

I'm with you on that one GW. I've never observed fish eggs on a bird's feet... though given enough years and a million ponds, it will certainly happen.

I have observed birds being forced by harassing birds to drop their catch. I have also observed a bird with live gambusia fry stuck to its beak. They obvously came from a pregnant gambusia that was just eaten by the bird. They could probably survive on the bird's beak for 10-15 minutes in humid conditions.

If you have a sterile pond within 1 mile of other waters, I think there's a probability curve for the pond being incidentally "innoculated".

I'm guessing that in a given year, there's up to 1 chance in 4 of getting gambusia, 1 in 10 chance per year of getting a cat fish, and 1 in 20 of getting a sunfish. My WAG is for illustration only, and I may be off a lot either way. But you can see that in 10 years you will most likely get a handful of fish.

The debate is not that important anyway. It's more about principle than a practical matter. Getting an occasional fish dropped into your pond is harmless most of the time, because the interloper is probably eaten right away in a strange environment.

I have a small 3/4 acre pond next to my home that I dug with my backhoe in 2003. In 2004, it filled up and the water remained dark brown and muddy looking. In 2006, I bought 200 channel cats from Tyler Fish Farms just outside of Tyler, as wells as coppern nose bluegill and fathead minnows.

Last summer, we started catching bullhead catfish. The year before we never cought any, and the ones that we have cought are very small. The channel cats are 2 to 3 pounds and larger, but the bullheads are just a few ounces. We thought they were baby channel cats until I posted pics of them here and learned to tell the difference in the fins. They are also a yellow color compared to the channel cats.

I guess the possibility exists that bullheads were mixed in with my channel cats. I couldn't say 100% that it didn't happen, but I don't think so. They have a very good reputation and I watched them get the channel cats out of their tanks inside the barn when I bought them. Every fish looked the same to me, but even more important, they would destroy their client base and reputation is they sold something like bullheads.

There is no creak higher then this pond. All the water that gets to it is from watershed that comes across my fields. The pond isn't located in the best place because of this, but I've move hundreds if not a thousand yards of dirt to catch every bit of water that I can to keep the pond full.

We do have herons and egrets there all the time. I didn't see either bring any fish to the pond, but that's how I feel the bullheads got in there. I think it happened last year and my guess is that since it's happened to my small pond, it's happened to my large pond.

Yes, fish will appear in a pond. what fish you get is the question. In my situation, it's not what I wanted, but short of draining the pond and starting over again, I'm stuck with them. Even if I did that, I'm sure it will just happen again anyway.

Eddie

Eddie, what's downstream from your pond? If the water from your emergency spillway goes to any creek or pond then the fish in those waters could most likely move into your pond during heavy rains.

bobad, where I live you can almost be sure Gams will show up in your pond. I can see how they would be more likely to be transfered by birds than other fish for a few reasons. They concentrate in the shallowest water where the birds wade, not deeper water where I would think most fish eggs would be. Also they're present all year instead of the seasonal occurrence of fish eggs. The fact that they are very aggressive might cause them to actively feed on or near birds feet. If fish with roe are transferred the eggs most likely wouldn't get fertilized, but since they're live bearers the gams have an advantage here too.

I think its a scientologist conspiracy. Misplaced theatans are screwing with our heads. Now if you will excuse me I need a new tinfoil hat.

TOM CRUISE AND JOHN TRAVOLTA ARE STOCKING OUR PONDS WITH UNDESIRABLE FISHES!

Mother Nature has a way of making things happen. I won't speculate on how, but it happens. I am sure that flooding is the most common way, but we have a small pond isolated between hills that cannot receive floodwaters and it has more 6" bass than you can imagine. Being in the middle of the woods (i mean really in the middle of nowhere), I am sure it has never been stocked.

I restate my firm belief that most mysterious fish appearances are due to alien abductions. Or Brothers-In-Law.

I knew the hold my pond has over me wasn't normal. It also explains some peoples fanatical defense of GSF. I for one welcome our new alien aquatic overlords

I'm sure you can be quite useful to them, revealing any plans for rebellion being fomented by the humans working in their underground fish feed mines.