Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose HBG reproduced, what to do next.

Esshup I'm going to go with hybrids on all three.

I have a number of times caught a fish in my old pond and said "that is a GSF" only to catch a real honest to goodness GSF right after and then say "nope, that last one was a hybrid". Those first two may look like GSF, but I do not think they are pure GSF. A pure GSF will almost have the body shape of a LMB and a mouth to match. If you look at the mouth closed on a GSF it will come back fully to the front of the eye or a little better. I don't think the mouth is quite big enough in his fish.

USGS green sunfish

I would not argue the point too hard though because I could be wrong (and have been many times )

I thought of the same thing as you did Esshup on putting an "L" and running a pipe up to the surface. Putting anoxic well water out into anoxic pond bottom water doesn't seem like the best thing to do. But I also thought as an alternative after installing the "L" he could run a flexible pipe up the slope of the bank to the pond edge. There he could make a pile of rocks and create a waterfall over the rocks. By installing a "T" and valve a foot or two under water, in the winter he could open the valve to let the water come out under any freezing to keep from freezing the waterfall pipe up and plugging the system. The "T" might even be situated so it shot up to open a hole in the ice.

Just some ideas to consider.

Another thing I previously brought up but think bears repeating, what if in the HBG he stocked there was a single, lone, female pure GSF contaminant.

Think what would happen genetically if that single female GSF was providing lots of eggs for those HBG males. I would think that a 50-50 BG/GSF hybrid male paired up with a 100% GSF female producing a 25/75 BG/GSF cross would end up with a lot of fry that looked very much like a GSF.

I also think getting one or two GSF contaminants in a load of HBG might not be out of the question for some fish farms.

After all, in one batch of RES I bought from a fish farm the kid counting them out into bags could not tell the difference between a minnow (either FHM or BNM) and a RES. I also separated out of the so called RES what appeared to be hybrids with a lot of GSF in them. They went in the old pond and not my forage pond. So with summer help and all, I can see where a fish farm might "mess up". Probably not the really good fish farms. But are they all really good?

See Lepomis (sunfish)trait chart below.