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#549567 06/22/22 01:32 PM
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lmoore Offline OP
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Did a search but couldn't find anything recent. Anyone familiar with or tried Orangespotted Sunifsh (Lepomis Humilis)? I found a local source of them, very interesting and cool looking sunfish so I may try them out in my little RES/YP/SMB pond that is just in it's beginning stages. I can't find much information on how prolific they are, but they apparently max out around 4 inches so I wouldn't think they would be a problem for the SMB to control once established. Probably more likely that I have a hard time keeping them around, I bet a SMB will go crazy over those colors.

https://www.iowadnr.gov/Fishing/Iow...s%20of,fins%20are%20fringed%20in%20black

Last edited by esshup; 06/22/22 11:18 PM. Reason: Fixed the link
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Go here for lots of info (FishBase). look toward bottom for specific info.

https://fishbase.net.br/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?ID=3374&AT=orangespotted+sunfish
















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lmoore,

Thinking along the same line, I asked the same question in this thread. So I didn't feel like it was totally resolved whether OSS are good for SMB. Even so, I will share a few thoughts.

OSS were indicated to be associated with above average standing weights of LMB in a survey of 42 Oklahoma ponds. All the same, it is not known whether their presence was responsible for this and it isn't know how much forage they supply. But at the very least they don't seem problematic for LMB. My hunch is that they would provide forage to SMB and make a contribution. Also, I don't think they would overpopulate or create any issues like that. They occurred in 38% (16) of the 42 ponds and averaged 14 lbs/acre standing weight with a maximum standing weight of 64 lbs/acre. Of interest ... their standing weight averaged more than Golden shiner and had maximums greater than golden shiner. So perhaps they are bit more resistant to predators? Perhaps or perhaps not enough samples.

One consideration is production over biomass. They have found a positive correlation of this ratio to the negative power of (weight at maturity). What this means is that prey that mature at small weights yield the most production relative to their biomass. Based on this metric the OSS is in the neighborhood of 2.86. Presumably a stable population with a minimum annual biomass of 40 lbs may be able to produce as much as 110 lbs of forage. Production over biomass not nearly that good for RES which metric is about .85. So 40 lbs of OSS may provide as much forage annually as 130 lbs of RES. Here we are considering the biomass low being at the time prior to spawning activity. RES will provide fishing opportunity where the OSS will not. A fair proportion of the RES production will outgrow SMB gape which reduce consumed forage weight. It's not clear to me how strongly OSS can persist with SMB but for the 38% of those 42 ponds they appeared to be strong enough to persist with LMB. So ... its an experiment ...

Last edited by jpsdad; 06/22/22 07:40 PM.

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jps says -
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RES will provide fishing opportunity where the OSS will not.
Why do you state this? Is your comment based of size of adult fish?


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Originally Posted by jpsdad
lmoore,

Thinking along the same line, I asked the same question in this thread. So I didn't feel like it was totally resolved whether OSS are good for SMB. Even so, I will share a few thoughts.

OSS were indicated to be associated with above average standing weights of LMB in a survey of 42 Oklahoma ponds. t with LMB.

Where did you find this information, or is this something you observed?


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Originally Posted by Bill Cody
jps says -
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RES will provide fishing opportunity where the OSS will not.
Why do you state this? Is your comment based of size of adult fish?

Yes. Few of them will grow larger than 3" and I didn't see the OP taking interest in fishing for them particularly.

But I stand corrected smile It depends. (For example, how could one argue with the grin in Theo's recently posted pic below? So maybe size doesn't take away any of the charm where the fishing opportunity is what we choose to make of it)

[Linked Image]

Last edited by jpsdad; 06/24/22 05:03 PM.

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Originally Posted by esshup
Originally Posted by jpsdad
lmoore,

Thinking along the same line, I asked the same question in this thread. So I didn't feel like it was totally resolved whether OSS are good for SMB. Even so, I will share a few thoughts.

OSS were indicated to be associated with above average standing weights of LMB in a survey of 42 Oklahoma ponds. t with LMB.

Where did you find this information, or is this something you observed?

Its public domain. I've posted links to the same article more than once. Once at the request of Bill Cody. If you are interested a google search will bring it right to you. Include "standing crops" and "Oklahoma ponds" in your search and it should be on the first page.


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I think you should try adding the OSS and see how it goes, skip adding golden shiners. The lack of commercial availability of OSS likely means there isn't much information on how they might interact with SMB/RES/YP pond. I can tell you that a 13" SMB can easily fit a 5 1/2" RES in its mouth. If OSS can persist with LMB present then they should do fine with SMB and provide plenty of forage. I would much rather have a forage fish that doesn't get large enough to escape predation than one that can get too large. I've been waging war on large golden shiners in my SMB/RES pond for the last two years, a large GSH is a direct competitor with everything its size and smaller.



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Originally Posted by jpsdad
Originally Posted by Bill Cody
jps says -
Quote
RES will provide fishing opportunity where the OSS will not.
Why do you state this? Is your comment based of size of adult fish?

Yes. Few of them will grow larger than 3" and I didn't see the OP taking interest in fishing for them particularly.

But I stand corrected smile It depends.

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Permission from who? My read on the Terms of Service has always been that posts and content to forum are not the community member's property any more. Simple as that. People use other people's photos all the time without permission simply by quoting the post. We can't have two sets of rules. I think the photo does show that a person could obtain enjoyment from catching fish in their ponds as small as OSS. The smile shows that very well I thought. Plus it was very handy as you recently posted it. As long as the photo is stored on the Pond Boss Forum server, I think I can link to it like anyone else can. I guess my question to you would be why does it bother you so much? I've been respectful to you. Why are you always gouging me?


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Decent members of the forum don't use other people's photos without stating that fact, although it has become painfully obvious that you often do. Of course, if you stated "Here's a photo of Theo Gallus with a very small Bluegill", readers might wonder why you were using it in a thread about Orange Spotted Sunfish after commenting about the size of Redear Sunfish. They might conclude that you don't know the difference.


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I’m going to put them in, I’m too late with no GSH but should be interesting either way. Thanks all for the input!

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Originally Posted by lmoore
I’m going to put them in, I’m too late with no GSH but should be interesting either way. Thanks all for the input!

Awesome! If I had a nearby source where I could catch them I would add them to my pond as well. The closest spot that I know of to catch wild OSS is 2 1/2 hours away.



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We have a small city lake near me (55 miles) that has OSS. Don't know where they came from, they were just there one year and have been a nuisance since. LMB will not control numbers because of amount of shallow water so the state stocked saugeye and has for 9 years. Got some great Saugeye, great crappie, LMB really never came back and population structure of OSS remains the same.

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Snipe,

Seems I recall you mentioning this before. One of my concerns about OSS would be whether they would plague angling by fiddling. Little BG do that. I'll spot a hefty BG and just cant get a bait to it for all the fiddling. If it does reach the big BG ... it is only after a two dozen smaller BG took and spit out the fly giving away that it is unpalatable. Is this what you meant by nuisance? This worry about fiddling was strong enough that I thought I would refrain from using OSS in a pond with hybrid Lepomis or single sex BG even with LMB present.

This is one of the reasons I like those RSH and BNM so much. Not that they won't fiddle but I think that kind of forage would be less prone to that. I will mention that I observe GAMs fiddle at baits but they don't seem to deter strikes from BG.


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Originally Posted by Snipe
We have a small city lake near me (55 miles) that has OSS. Don't know where they came from, they were just there one year and have been a nuisance since. LMB will not control numbers because of amount of shallow water so the state stocked saugeye and has for 9 years. Got some great Saugeye, great crappie, LMB really never came back and population structure of OSS remains the same.

Snipe,

Why does the "amount of shallow water" make it such that the LMB cannot control the OSS population?

I assume it is because the OSS can spawn more fish than the LMB can consume. However, it could be due to impairment of the LMB predation, or other reasons I don't know.

I would also think that saugeye would be more effective predators than LMB in open water and less effective than LMB in shallow, weed-choked water.

Obviously, I am missing something (not unusual). I am just trying to learn what factor I am missing. I could imagine some pond management scenarios where OSS might be preferred over BG.

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All fish have pros and cons in the pond ecosystem. There are numerous fish species that have not been intently studied as much as LMbass and BG for how these less common fish species will perform in the pond niche with other species. A lot about various fish combinations is still to be learned. As Shorty suggests stock the OSS, watch the results and be welcome to return and report your observations with the OSS in your pond. That practical research is one good way how we learn more about fish pond management.

Last edited by Bill Cody; 06/25/22 12:52 PM.

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I say a nuisance because they have inhibited BG recruitment (at least that's the thought). The shallows of this small city lake were suddenly teaming with OSS in water only a 2" fish could make a living in. The LMB were not doing much to the population of these invaders. The only "known" source of these were in a system 200 miles away. Keep in mind, most water in the very western part of KS is underground water.
From the time the OSS showed up in about 2000, the BG population went the other way. The biologist at the time felt the high numbers of these small but fast fish were raiding a lot of nests. within a few years the LMB WR was showing signs of decline so they opted to stock fingerling saugeye with the thought these small predators would cruise the shallows at night and bust some of the OSS population down, which never really happened. The remaining BCP grew to larger sizes but the LMB and BG continued to suffer.
There has never been a determination of what the actual, TRUE reason is for this, but the OSS has been blamed for this in this small lake and they still are very abundant.
40 miles east of this is another small community lake that had PSS that were very abundant-also with no clue how they got there. Both had similar populations of BG and LMB but the PSS didn't seem to wreck things like the OSS did-at least that was the thoughts at the time. 2 years ago, the impoundment with PSS flooded badly and now there is little sign of PSS but LMB and BG have rebounded fine. 2 different ponds though, funny how every one has it's own personality.

Last edited by Snipe; 06/25/22 01:49 PM.
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Snipe,

Thanks for dropping by and adding all of that additional information!

Having a bunch of small and fast OSS as forage for the LMB does sound like a recipe for a stunted sunfish population that cannot be controlled by the top predators.

Even if the saugeye were picking them off at night, then the saugeye probably outgrew their forage so quickly that they could not keep the small spawning-size OSS in check.

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Snipe, were there any efforts made to estimate standing weights of the community members? It would be really interesting to understand what percentage of the standing crop is represented by each species in that lake.

Though LMB standing crops vary widely as a percentage of total standing crop, they seem to average between 14% and 16% of the total standing weight when many samples (from different lakes/ponds) are taken. Swingle noted that the most ponds meeting his definition of balanced had F rations (prey weight over predator weight) of 3 to 4 (which equates to 20% to 25% of the total standing crop) for the LMB/BG combination. But its not just that percentage, how many mouths comprise that percentage is also important.

The paper on the survey of 42 ponds is an amalgamation of 42 anecdotes where each one represents a unique natural system. In other words, no individual pond is representative of anything typical. There is one pond of these samples which (I think) skewed heavily the association of LMB standing weight with presence of OSS. It was pond 29 which was 21 years of age at the time of survey. It's standing crop was 650 lbs of which there were 320 lbs of LMB, 108 lbs of crappie, 71 lbs of "Other sunfishes", 146 lbs of "Course fishes", and 5 lbs of BG.

Course fishes and Other sunfishes are where individual species are not counted but lumped together. In the paper they explain which fish are lumped into these categories. RES, LES, GSF, & OSS are the other sunfishes. It is very interesting to note how "not prevelant" BG were in this pond. 5 lbs of 650 lbs gives the BG proportion less than 1% of the standing weight. This despite BG having an average of proportion of 39% of the standing weight of all ponds considered. My hunch is that this pond's "other sunfishes" were comprised mostly of the maximum noted OSS standing weight of 64 lbs/acre where the remaining 7 lbs could have been RES, GSF, and/or LES. I thinks this is a reasonable inference given that OSS were associated with above average standing weight and because BG tend to outnumber (RES, GSF, and LES and most any other water I have experience with. It isn't known whether the OSS were introduced to this pond simultaneously with BG and other sunfish, introduced first, or invaded the pond in high water events. I think the latter is definitely a possibility and if this is so then I think this suggests that OSS are particularly robust survivors for such a small fish. So this keeps with the thoughts of the biologist's hypothesis that OSS are impacting BG recruitment. It would also seem to suggest that OSS are capable of impacting recruitment of other sunfishes like RES, GSF, and LES.

Now I would mention that of all the ponds surveyed this pond ranked 3rd in At. This metric is the proportion of the standing weight of that is of harvestable size. This value for this pond was 76%. This is all the more remarkable when we consider that OSS never reach their definition of harvestable size and that a population of 64 lbs of OSS represents almost 10% of the standing weight. More than 65% of the standing weight was comprised in the predators LMB, and Crappie. Substantial proportion of the crappie must have been harvestable. So from the perspective of an LMB/Crappie pond ... the addition of OSS may be beneficial. This provides an anecdote of at least one possible eventual outcome of such a combination's interaction.

Last edited by jpsdad; 06/27/22 05:57 PM.

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Searching for the elusive Orange Spotted Sunfish in Minnesota.

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Originally Posted by Dwight
Searching for the elusive Orange Spotted Sunfish in Minnesota.

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How do you post pics that actually show up instead of a link? I would post more pics if I knew how to make them pop up like that. And good luck with that search boat!

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jpsdad, I'm sure I can make a call and get a population structure report the last time it was done, but it may not be the data you are looking for.
They don't make a science project out of every lake in their district because they don't have the time being jailed to 40 hr weeks.
And to be really honest, they don't care to discuss Swingle from 1950, that is almost something they want to avoid.
The target for modern state biologists is condition and number of target sport species with notations on other species present in a given sample size, whether it's a unit effort of electrofishing, fyke net or by-catch during a target species set.
Most if not all of this type of work is now done by college students and quite frankly there is much more time spent on how invasive species transfers occur compared to what percentage of the population the OSS makes up in a small city lake. The public demands legal size fish be magically put on a stringer and that's where upper management directs biologists input.
I'm going to share something that was said to me about 6 months ago in my search for DNA results from different areas, from our head of fisheries in KS.. He said to me.. "you are looking for something that the answer does not exist for".. I know what I am looking for, 75% of what I wanted to find I did. I think you are in the same place I was in that the answers you are looking for-specifically-will never be found.

Last edited by Snipe; 06/27/22 04:18 PM.
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Grasshopper, that was very wise and experienced advice.

Take the pebble from my hand.


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I definitely agree there is no particular answer as there are so many variables. Just thought you would kick out of that anecdote as it seems to confirm the biologists' suspicion that OSS are impacting BG reproduction in the 55 acre lake. This is not something I would have suspected. I can hardly imagine a 21 year old pond with 5 lbs of BG and 71 lbs of other sunfishes (with 650 lbs total crop) but it happened. As much as anything, I did want to make the point that the reference pond probably greatly influenced the statistics including the suspected association with LMB standing weights benefitting from OSS presence. I can't say for sure, but neglecting that pond they just might have come to the opposite conclusion. That pond's standing crop of LMB was many standard deviations away from the mean so an outlier that can skew statistics.

I empathize with the biologists' challenges. It's so hard to control multiple factors to meet license holder's expectations. Even if the near impossible were achieved ... I am sure some would expect more.

Last edited by jpsdad; 06/27/22 05:37 PM.

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