Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations huge dead bluegill

I found this stud floating yesterday. He is on the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket for reference. I have seen a few dead in the last few weeks. Just one here and there. I have killed 2 otters in the last month, but this one had no obvious damage. Back in the summer I lost some bluegill. I saw about a dozen one day, 4 another day and then just a few here and there. this was over the course of a week or so.
Few questions and observations:
1.It is always 100% of the time a male bg and they are always the larger class in the pond. Why only males?
2. I never see a dead bass, only bg.
3. Reckon what the live weight of this bg would have been?

That's a monster for sure Scott!

Since it is only the largest dying, is it possible they are dying of old age? Do you feed your BG pellets? I've read that pellets can reduce their life span.

I do feed. I mainly feed aquamax 600 but i do use a little topical from time to time.. I feed 4 times a day with feeder during warm months and also hand feed nearly everyday when i walk to the pond just to watch them eat. I just don't think it is old age. It's hard to believe several would die on the same day or even a few during a week span.

Scott, do you think it's possible that some of the larger male BG were still guarding the beds when a cold snap hit? They'd be more exposed to thermal shock and/or O2 deprivation than deeper fish. I suspect that's what got my large CNBG last fall when they succumbed to fungus, while no other fish had an issue.

Did you get a length measurement then we can provide a standard weight of that dandy BG. Lmb can live several years longer than the BG life span. Once a pond reaches 7-8 years old then around 25 to 30 percent of the oldest fish will die each year due to natural mortality. This has been proven in many research studies.

If the fish are feeding almost exclusively on pellets, most if not all the current diet formulations of pellets cause premature death of the fish due to unhealthy "stuff" in the pellets. Most all fish food is designed to grow fish fast to harvestable sizes but not designed for longevity.

Optimal claims that their feed does not reduce life expectancy the way many others do, and some folks here say that their BG don't get fatty livers on the Optimal feed. Whether that's true is a matter of some debate and no definitive answers, last I checked.

Modern higher protein feeds do seem healthier for LMB and BG than the older feeds, I think.

That bluegill doesn't look like it experienced any decline in it's massive body size prior to death.

Like it was full on feeding 'til the end.

Honestly he had a pretty bad smell so I didn't want to mess with him much. Thankfully a guy that works for me picked him up and put him on the bucket. The only thing we had to measure him with was the ruler that is built in to the tail gate on the gator, but neither of us were brave enough to pick him up that far. Part of my business is striping parking lots (reason for my toe being painted on the boot in the pic) and I use my boot to step off lengths for a quick reference from time to time. My boot sole is 12" exactly. I put my boot beside him and he was ever bit as long as my boot. I can measure that bucket bottom and see if that helps get an idea.

Sunil, I agree. He looked perfect as far as condition. His back was so thick. It looked like he had 3/4" tenderloins.

The area below my pond where the pipe comes out has created about a 8'x8' hole of water. i put 4 bg and 4 lmb in that hole of water when i first noticed the otter activity. they were kinda of a lure to the trap and it worked, twice. Before i caught the otters all the bg died, but the lmb were fine. There was only a trickle of water coming out of the pipe. This leads me to believe that bg cannot tolerate certain water conditions that lmb can. I believe something happens to my water condition occasionally and that is why i have a few die.

Scott sorry to see you lose such a trophy, but congrats on that body condition. That's a mammoth BG absolute brick!

As to the length ... I get 475 pixels for the fish and 408 pixels for the bucket. I measured the bottom of one of my buckets to be 10.5" ... so ...

Length = 475/408(10.5)= 12.22"

But isn't the RW of this fish well over 120?

Here is what I get for possible weights:

RW.......WEIGHT
---------------
100.......1.71
110.......1.88
120.......2.06
130.......2.23

For my two cents it's > than 2 lbs

Fish smell washes off and there are gloves.

There must have been a brick wall of funk around that dead bluegill to make those men act like girls.....

The older I get the weaker my stomach gets. I used to be able to kick a dead cow and run opossums out of its butt, sit on top of it and eat a ham sandwich. Not anymore..lol Seriously though, the fish was awful.

jpsdad, that is some great forensic work you did. I am about to attach a pic of a 1.9 lb female in the next post.I didn't get a length, just the weight on it.

This female weighed 1.9 lbs on digital scales. I know she had some eggs in her, but she wasn't bloated looking like some of the other females we were catching that day. Before this one, the largest one we have weighed was a male at 1.5 lbs.

Our weather is up and down right now, fish are still feeding well on warm days. Water is fairly clear now and I saw some nice ones today. I cut the feeder off a few days ago due to the hard cold we were having. Or at least hard cold for us southerners.

We found another floater today. It appeared to have been on the bottom for a long time. it was covered in silt. Reckon why some are just now floating to the top? I figured they would be more apt to float in hot weather.

Regardless - you are growing some great bluegills by doing something right! Good job.

Bill Cody. Thank you. I do pretty much what I was taught here on Pondboss. Feed them well(automatic feeder and high protein food), cull every female I catch unless she is huge, keep the bass population high. The only one thing I do that I came up with on my own is feed them heavy right before dark. From my understanding bg don't feed at night, so I like to put them to bed on a full stomach. We all know what happens to us if we go to bed on a full stomach, we get big!

Not in a van it doesn't.