Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Sunfish-Including Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass Attempt at Smallmouth Production for my own use

Eric,

Actually I'm not sure tarps or covering the bottom would help much with Chara from my experience as it's an algae and is not rooted. I've seen it grow right over the top of rock.

Krill and brine shrimp work but I've had pretty good luck with the Aquamax starter feed with bluegills and yellow perch. I don't see why it shouldn't work with the smallmouth.

His pond banks are almost vertical and it would be difficult to hold tarps on the sides. Gasses will also accumulate under the tarps and cause problems - been there done that. Smallies should train easily to the fry starter. Timing will be important. Catmandoo had 1" LMB eating ground pellets so smallies should also take well to feed. My experience is they at all sizes up to 8" 'go to feed' a lot easier than LMB.

Not very well stated (A couple cheap tarps or plastic covering all or part the bottom would help ) – try this - Physical barriers are also used to eliminate plants by shading the bottom. These work well for swimming areas, docks, etc. but must be kept clean of any buildup of sediment and debris.

http://aquaplant.tamu.edu/management-options/muskgrass/

Thanks for the information and link Eric. Always appreciated.

I got the fry starter today. $46.00. Fortunately it goes a long ways. I will set up the belt feeders under the lights tonight and see what happens. I sprinkled it around to see if they were at least remotely interested. It's startled them when I threw it over them, but some seemed to want to check it out at least. I do notice some are chasing water striders which are too big for them to eat. Typical predator fish. LOL

Amazingly just removing some of the Chara and bringing up bottom sediment into the water column along with higher temps has created a rapid algae bloom. I knew it would from past experience.

I will be removing more Chara this evening. The good thing is I won't be able to get it all but that will act as a safeguard against to much of an algae bloom and a crash. That according to a fish farmer I really respect, Bill Lynch, a retired extension agent and perch farmer extraordinaire. He says some macrophytes are not a bad thing even in a hatchery pond for that reason. Makes sense to me.

Cecil, I'm not sure of your exact set up. However, covers or partial covers on feed training containers usually improves the percent of SMB (or LMB) that train to the prepared diet.

They are the covered belt feeders with the German clocks. Catmandoo (Ken) actually gave me one so I now have two. I'm having problems with one of them but should be able to fix it.

Is this what you are referring to?

I think that Dr. Dave is referring to covering your tanks that the SMB are being feed trained in.

BTW: Nice smallies!, and great to hear from Dr. Dave !!!

Right, JKB. Whatever container the fish are in, we got higher training percentages to the prepared diets when tanks were mostly or at least partially covered (lid).

I think the container they are in is a 1/10 ac pond........

O.K. now I understand! Yes as Scott (esshup) said they are in the pond now and I will not seine them out to put in tanks for feed training until they are 1.5 inches in length. However in the mean time I want to see if I can train them off the piers with belt feeders and a night light. Might as well give it a try.

I do plan on covering at least part of the tanks with shade cloth unless I bring them inside.

In case you're mistaken the pic was taken off the Internet and are not my smallies. It was faster to get a pic of a belt feeder off the Internet vs. wading through my extensive photobucket account.

Here are smallmouth (orangish when illuminated) and a few fatheads under the light and belt feeder tonight. I think most are after zooplankton but I'm pretty sure I saw some smallmouth already ingesting starter powder. If not perhaps they may learn from the fatheads, which take to artificial feed quite rapidly?



On another note I thought I saw a couple of yellow perch in this pond after looking at the photo below. If that's the case I may have a hole bored through by five start moles once again. The pond adjacent to the smallmouth hatchery pond is for yellow perch and bluegill production.

What do you think? Could the one barred fish in the photo be a yellow perch? There's also another fish below it and slightly right near he bottom of the photo that seems to have the profile of a yellow perch.

OK

Yes those two in the lower left area do appear to be YP and a little larger indicating earlier hatch & slightly older fish. A little more time will tell the rest of the story. The YP will probably accept food faster than the smallies. Those few YP may grow optimally without cohort competition. And the FHM will probably help teach the others to feed train; a common occurrance since kleptoparasitism commonly occurs in numerous fish species. As you know monkey see - monkey do type of thing.

I agree with Bill, they look like YOY YP to me too. Cecil, was the pond completely drained, killed and filled with well water? No way could a pair of YP gotten into the pond earlier in the year?

No, no way anything was left after I drained and limed the pond.

Funny I saw one of those fish today again in daylight. Seems to have too many bars for a perch. I'm wondering if some kind of killifish or small perch related species was mixed in with the fatheads i planted with the broodfish and spawned.

I have a more pressing problem! I saw a broodsize smallmouth in the pond today. I need to get him or her out of the pond pronto. I thought I got them all out...

Edit:

Now I'm not so sure it was a smallmouth. I may have been a large bullfrog shooting away under water. Clarity was off so...

Methinks Bill has the right idea, # of fish in = # of fish out.

Many more smallies under the light tonight. If I can swing it I will order another belt feeder to put on the pier on the other end of the 1/10 acre pond. But first I will put the word out for a used one or two on a couple of aquaculture list serves. That's how I got a 200 foot X 8 foot deep seine for $50.00.

My other belt feeder is on the perch/bluegill production pond. I feel I may be missing some fish on the other end of the pond.

Didn't observe any fish that looked like YP tonight under the light, but I did see some obvious fatheads that took some of the feed off the surface.

On a funny note I observed both a small leech and a small moth that were totally destroyed by a two or three smallies.

Bill knows I'm an idiot when it comes to record keeping. I knew how many broodfish I put in the pond the first time, but put a few more in later, and can't remember the exact number!

Cecil, LMK the price of the belt feeder and when you will be ordering. I might piggy back on your order for one. I've had a number of times when I could use one............

I think it's time for a whole nightcrawler on a hook for the remaining SMB. Larger than what the YOY would chase after. Easier now to catch than when the bait stealers get large enough to feel that they can take on a whole nightcrawler!

I think hitchikers in the FHM vs. tunnel from a mole for the non-SMB YOY.

Already tried the nightcrawler on a hook a week ago for several hours and no takers. If I wasn't so lazy I'd go out right now and sink it under the light.

I will try again tomorrow.

Not 100 percent sure there is a smallmouth left.

One fish (or even 2) in a pond no matter how small will be hard to catch unless they were coming to food on a consistent basis.

Very true!

I have a good hatch in my main pond now too, at least in one near shore area. I scooped up a few with an aquarium dip net attached to long piece of PVC. Here are 30 from my first attempt.




I moved at least double that in my second attempt. They seem to have hatched later than my hatchery pond, and are at least 1/2 as small probably a third at this point. I first observed them about 3 days ago.

I figure the more I can move to the hatchery pond the more I will have at harvest -- to a point.


If my seine mesh was fine enough I'm confident I could seine out several hundred.

Here's a close up of one of the ones I moved. I will try and get another picture of one of the smallmouth that are much larger in the hatchery pond and some are definitely taking artifical feed as it sinks under the light and in daylight -- some even from the top.

I apologize for the foam dust from carving fish bodies that looks like nasty dust. (This was taken in my taxidermy work area) Once I noticed and removed it -- to take more pictures -- the battery in my camera died!

They do have caudal fins btw. They are extremely transparent and difficult to see at this point.




Edit: On a walk back to the two hatchery ponds I noticed a broodstock smalmouth I missed! I got him out with a nitecrawler. I believe at most there is one left and will keep any eye out for him or her.

Love to see those black dots. A pic of one swimming in a quart jar works well.