Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Placing branches down for YP spawn

Don,

Just curious...ever considered dropping just a few WE in your pond?

I think those are great growth metrics on your yp don't sell yourself short. Further you are developing science from which we are all benefitting with your unique fishery and forage base. Please keep us apprised of your experiences and great work thus far. I'd love some wr totals from your yp if you get the time for length and weight measurements.

Bill Cody,
You mentioned the egg strands are fertilized as they come out (or prior maybe?) This means the male has done his work prior to egg release or as they release?

Also, does anyone know if they only lay eggs at night? Someone mentioned the moon phase may have something to do with it but I'm curious why they wouldn't lay eggs during the day as well.

esshup has the information correct that he posted back on the previous page: "it gets fertilized as the female lays it." In optimum spawning, several to a dozen males follow the female and spray milt near the ribbon of eggs as it is released. Reports indicate most spawning activity for perch occurs in dusk, night, and dawn. Subscribe to PBoss magazine where I plan to have 6 articles on growing yellow perch in ponds. Part2 deals with spawning through late fry stage and it is almost done except for a few pictures. Hopefully I can complete all of them in 2016.

Bill has inspired me to build some large traps to get some sizes and weights. We plan on this this project this summer. I just need to get a fish scale or digital mail scale for the weights. Length and girth will be no problem.

I was going to add walleye but with the few recruitment of perch fry I have been worried about pulling that trigger. I wonder about the shiner adults eating the perch eggs or fry.

My goals are the same as Bills perch pond but the only difference is trapping and pellet training our own perch. The problem with that is that we can not trap any young perch in the minnow traps. We have tried many different ways, depths and traps will little luck trapping young perch. This is why my thoughts are that the shiners are culling our young perch for us with some recruitment making it through the rath of the shiners.

Cheers Don.

Dono - How far did you have to go to get your initial stocker perch? If your YP recruitment is poor and as you harvest adults you can always add some stocker YP every year or two.

I had to go to Lake Erie about 3.5 hours away.

I did wonder about asking if Frank can deliver some each year if he was heading up this way.

Cheers Don.

EDIT: lets make some traps and try an assessment of the pond this summer. So far this spring we are very happy with what 8-10" perch we are catching.

Again I expect the perch we are catching on worms or natural bait are the ones foraging for food and not on pellets. Our pellet perch last summer were noticeable with the feed running out of them and the two large layers of fat inside them.

Dono - Another option for getting some of those high quality stocker YP from the Lk Erie producer is to see if you can meet the delivery truck somewhere when it is within an hour or two of your pond. Win-Win. You get fish at closer drive and they make a additional sale.

FYI, up at the pond this evening. There are still new ribbons, now showing up around the dam, at the north end.
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll280...C6E29657C04.jpg

Caught seven YP this evening. All before the feeder went off at 6:30. After it went off I noticed more YP rising to take feed than I've ever seen. This one was a little over 11". No eggs in any of the seven YP. Also, in cleaning the fish, I noticed most had pellets in their stomach. No other food appears eaten. There are lots of FHM everywhere.

http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll280...BB0414EC1F9.jpg

Also had a GSH hit my little lure. First GSH I've seen since they were stocked a little less than a yr ago.

http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll280...B267DB9F4F2.jpg

Clouds of FHM everywhere, so there's plenty of forage.

SetterG - It seems the YP are telling you there are still fair numbers present and that you are not a very successful perch angler. You will have to spend some time this year sharpening your skills for catching YP. Keep trying & learning you will learn the technique.

So check this out. I had been actively trapping with various minnow nets, trying to see what I can catch. This weekend I pulled the traps out to the edges of the pond. One trap was left with half of the trap out and half in. The part in the pond had only about 3" of water in it and was right on the shore line, half in and half out.

I walked the perimeter today and pulled the traps all the way out of the water. Here is the trap I'm referring to.



I got to this trap and looking down the barrel of one of the side holes I found this big pile of white mush on the bottom of the trap right under the hole. This is looking down the little hole in the side of the trap:




I thought, COOL we have some frog or toad eggs here! They were a dense jelly like mass, very slimy. I reached into the opening on the side of the trap and could easily scoop up the mass of eggs in one mass. They seemed to be a clump and acted like Jello. I couldn't identify them, even close up.




I figured if the critter laid the big egg mass in the shallows then they probably should go back there. I saw no tadpoles, frogs, turtles etc yet as waters are still cold. I tossed the handfull into the shallows and then I saw the glob just turn into this!!
















































I was shocked! It was like a metamophosis in front of my eyes. Even though the eggs were a clear pile or blob, you toss them in the water and they become a very cool ribbon instantly!

So I have 2 egg 'piles' now, this one was on the east side of the pond where the sun can shine. The west side of the pond is shaded by forest. The first ribbon was on the south side where there is no trees.

Somehow that perch went into about 2-3" of water, backed in the hole of the minnow trap (or went in and swam around in the trap a bit), chose to lay eggs there, and perhaps some males also went in and swam around to to fertilize the eggs? Then the perch left the way she came.

I now wonder if the attraction was the water temp and shallow water but also because the minnow net and the small hole to get in presented a place to safely spawn? I wonder if perch like the protection of the dense tree branches but don't necessarily need a branch to drape the eggs over? I wonder why they chose the net particularly inside the net to drop the eggs even though the eggs had to go in a pile without any way to string them out along the bottom or over a tree branch. hmm...

Maybe I should put out some cavities and see if they do like a little hiding place while they are making babies?

Anyone else concerned that this cold weave coming up is going to cause the span to fail? I wouldn't be surprised to see my pond ice over again after the cold shot or two and high winds we are likely to get.

I totally agree! The seven I caught yesterday were with a little imitation minnow. I've got my fly rod up here. I'd really like to catch them on a fly. About the only solution I see for that would be with a imitation floating fish food, and fish when the feeder goes off.

Where can I find a fly that looks like Optima?

Any other ways I can catch perch with a fly rod?
Any issues with catching perch while the feeder goes off? (I don't want to scare them off feed.)

You may laugh at me but use a nib lit of sweet corn. It works really well.

Cheers Don.

I'll give it a shot. I assume with a small hook, and a bobber, right off the bottom?

My kids were slaying them this past weekend with a little chunk of nightcrawler slowly dragged across the bottom. Small barbless hook with a very tiny weight. Chunk of nightcrawler was 1 inch or less. Getting hits on every cast, barbless hooks make it a little more challenging to land them. Not feeding pellets at the moment so not exactly the same situation.

With the corn you can use it on the bottom or on the fly rod. Spring they are scavenging the bottom. We have the best luck with worms on the bottom. The bite is light this time of the year. A 13" plus will bite like the 6 or 8".

San Juan worm in correct color would match Optimal. Or, this would be an easy fly to tie if you go this route: I'd match foam strip [to ensure it floats] and dub to correct color and wrap them on nymph hook shank. That's how I'd address matching the Optimal "hatch".

Thanks. I don't tie my own flies. I'll figure something out. Maybe I can modify one of my hoppers.
I've got San Juan worms as well. Plus some real worms. Caught 9 more yesterday bouncing a jig on the bottom. Caught in places I haven't caught any before.

You should think about buying a little starter kit for $50. I keep meaning to get serious, but only find time to dabble...still, would be a great skill to master. The SJW is probably the easiest pattern to tie - few wraps on foam and dub and a drop of head cement and boom you're done. Just a thought for you.

I had a small jig on yesterday morning. Running it along the bottom I caught 20 more YP. There for a while, it was on almost every cast. I started just keeping the larger males. I ended up keeping 7 more YP, four males, and three females.
There were many smaller males. I'm thinking they were from Raiman's recent stocking, as they were in the 3-5" range.
As long as I keep a feeder running, I should not end up with stunted YP, right?

I also had two HBG hit my little jig. I was a bit surprised. It was in water where there is no structure, but it was near where the most recent YP ribbons were laid. The HBG have grown an inch or so, since being stocked last summer.

IF your feeding them you will be very please how well they grow. I didn't realize how fast perch grew. They start to slow down a bit after 11"s but up to 11"s they get there fast.

I learned last year that if the water stays a bit cooler the larger ones will grow better. I started running the aeration shorter and only at night. This was Bill Codys advice and the reasoning was that the larger perch grow better with the water staying cooler than the 80's I think.

Cheers Don.

Loretta,
I think if your perch are ready to lay eggs they will lay eggs regardless of if the bottom conditions are not ideal or not. However my perch are completely ignoring my branches and instead are laying them on the leaves in very shallow water. My branches are out about 6' from sure with 2' of water below the branches. Then we had the big rain yesterday and now the butt end of the branches need to be pulled back up the bank. Of the 5-6 trees I put in only one has a ribbon on it and that is about 1' out from bank in shallow water, maybe 1' or so. At least for my pond, the perch seem to want to be right in the 10-12" water range and seem to like to lay them right over the oak leaves. Next to the trees I see 4-5 new ribbons all laying right on top of leaves, some in water less than 1'.

The accidental discovery of the perch going in my big pyramid minnow trap to lay eggs might be useful for you. I put 3 styles of minnow traps out around the pond. The metal mesh minnow trap they ignored as it was in about 18" water and right on the bottom. The big pyramid trap I had them go in once and lay eggs even though the water was probably only 8-9" where they swam in the hole and then they swam out.

I had purchased another type of smaller collapsible minnow trap, made out of a green mesh cloth. The trap is rectangular and the hole is right on the small end of the trap, about 2" round hole. I set that trap in just enough water to cover it, about 12" and low and behold yesterday a new perch ribbon right in the trap. This time they went in a small hole, did the good deed, and came back out again. Amazing!

You can see various pictures of it here.
crayfish trap

So, maybe any mesh bag or trap (the soft green mesh seems to be fine with them) could be staged instead of branches?

I have been trying to move the ribbons to branches to stage them up in the water column and to help with water exposure and aeration. My first ribbon is now starting to break apart and some of the eggs look more dark. But water air/water getting cold with flurries expected tomorrow so not sure if eggs go into hibernation, and then continue to maturate as waters warm up again.

another footnote... Minnow traps really help you see what is in your pond. I couldn't catch minnows last fall or this spring in my traps. Wasn't sure what to make of it..are they just not going in the traps or are they truly gone? I restocked about 8000 minnows this week Tuesday and yesterday already had minnows in all my traps. Even though I had 2 years to try to create forage base with lots of FHM, they are gone in about 6 mo once perch get going on them

I'm hoping enough heat has been stored to prevent much but a skim. So far the only eggs I'm seeing are frog eggs. Hoping my perch are lazy or late bloomers! Looks like we are in for quite a shock with this cold. Still take this winter over 14/15 anytime.

I don't think any YP were under 5" in the stock earlier this spring. I wouldn't think you'd have ANY YP under 5" (except possible new fry) since there hasn't been a prior spawn