Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Pumpkinseed sunnys

Hi all,
Just some personal experience with introducing pumpkinseed sun fish into my northern waters of NY.

I put in 12 small (about 4”) last fall into an established 1/2 acre pond, which has a good population of yellow perch and black crappie. The black crappie have been doing poorly lately with little recruitment in the past 5 years. Plus they are credit cards with eyeballs. Really skinny! Just not much forage that suits them.

Now there are 12 fairly stout and healthy PS, and zillions of happy little ones! They are flourishing in my pond. The goal is to slowly introduce bass, and if possible, single sex them since we don’t fish often. Secondary goal was to not introduce fish that nip when swimming yet still have bass forage. While not as bad as bluegill, these little shits are fearless. Even the little ones will come right up to you to see of those hairs are worms or not. So a little fail there. But they are fun to swim with! They love to hang around and see what you stir up and join in the feeding frenzy.

Now I am debating on bass this fall, or wait until spring. What is don’t know is what size is safe in my established pond. The yellow perch are 13”, so besides a couple of koi, the biggest mouths in the pond. I may also wait until next fall for this year’s babies to fill out more.

I pondered this question before we stocked and found a hatchery that said they sold female only LMB but they didn't use a catheter to make sure so there is still some failure rate on sexing. For the second part of this if you are doing an all-female population, you will likely need 2-year-old fish / 15" ish. Have to be careful though....1 male gets in and your stocking effort is not what you intended. Make sure to ask questions and get comfortable with their testing process.

Liquidsquid,
I stocked only a few pumpkinseed with similar ideas to yours (except we don't swim in the pond so no worries there) I'm curious, did you see them spawn? Did you see typical bluegill shaped and size spawning circles or did the pumpkinseed pull off a spawn without notice?

I ask because I thought there nests would be easy to spot in the shallows (with a swept out depression with clean base) But I think I'm seeing just a few smaller wide body fish coming to get pellets this fall which would have to be pumpkinseed as the only other smaller fish species would have to be some type of shiner.

Liquidsquid,

I like your plan for predation but am not sure what the stocking rate should be in a 1/2 pond with BC, YP, and PS. Hopefully Bill Cody will step in with comments because he has had success with panfish focused pond(s) with non-reproducing LMB. Although different prey combination(s) AFAIK.

If I were to do this, I think I would time the LMB stocking in the spring. Females are easier to sex then and I think a supplier would be more willing to sell sexed female LMB. Expect to pay 2 times the price of non-sexed males.

You will need multiple LMB I believe. So there is risk of a male being stocked without positive ID. Positive ID would be where gametes are observed. Where risk is involved it is always good to look at the odds to understand the probability of an unwanted scenario. Chances are the ID used by the supplier of your LMB will be the swollen red papilla identifier. This works very well for a practical identifier when producing LMB fry. They want roughly a 50/50 mix of females to males. This method will misidentify 21% of females in the spring. IOWs, 21% of the females will not have the red swollen vent. This method will also misidentify 3% of males. IOWs 3% of males (for reasons I do not understand) will have a swollen red vent. It is this latter misidentification that you must be concerned with. It's really not a problem that they misidentify a female for a male because they are sexing females for you. But if they mistake a male for a female, you will probably get reproduction.

So there is a 3% chance a male will be misidentified. When sexing 200 fish of 50/50 mixed sex, there will likely be 3 males identified as females and 79 females correctly identified as females. And so you have a (100*3/(79+3) = 3.65%) probability of getting a male mixed in. You can multiply that probability by the number of fish you need to gain a sense of how likely it would be that you would get male mixed in. For example if you need six, you would get .219 and so there is a 22% chance that 1 of the 6 is a male misidentified as a female. By the time you have purchased 30 fish, it is very likely that at least 1 of the 30 is a male.

Can you better the odds? Yes, if you can learn and perform the probing techniques that can be used in combination with the swollen red papilla method. Most of the males that would slip through by red papilla can be rejected on the basis of failing the probing identifier. For example, depth of straw penetration correctly identifies 90% of males and so if subjected to this test (something you could perform before release) you could reduce the probability of stocking a male to .365%. Under this scenario, after STOCKING 300 fish it would be likely that 1 of those 300 is a male.

Those aren't bad odds either way in a small pond with a limited stocking and if you can live with those odds these are relatively simple very practical ways to sex LMB. To learn more about sexing LMB do a Google search of "Practical Field Methods of Sexing Largemouth Bass"

PS are known to stunt and reproduce at a lower rate than BG so you may not need LMB on the same stocking level as normally suggested. In your northern location LMB become sexually mature at a slower rate (often 2 yrs old). Also consider SMB and WE as possible adult additions. Even the experts (fishery science grads) who try the all-female LMB approach don't have long term success sexing LMB. Usually by year 3 LMB reproduction has occurred.

Since SMB have a smaller gape than LMB and PS aren't known to get as large (overall) as BG, I would consider SMB before LMB. Maybe a very few Saugeye if they could be gotten to help with the BC overpopulation too, but in a small pond only a very limited amount. You'd have less reproduction with SMB vs. LMB too.

HSB could also be an option because of 0 reproduction, small gape. Again not many but since there is no worry about reproduction, I think they may help too.

Lsquid:

I'm curious, did you see them spawn? Did you see typical bluegill shaped and size spawning circles or did the pumpkinseed pull off a spawn without notice?

I ask because I thought there nests would be easy to spot in the shallows (with a swept out depression with clean base) But I think I'm seeing just a few smaller wide body fish coming to get pellets this fall which would have to be pumpkinseed as the only other smaller fish species would have to be some type of shiner.

I did see their nests, not as obvious as bluegill, but a little shallow center of cleared gravel and aggressive defense. One was right next to the dock in shallow water, maybe 1.5’ deep. The darned fish wasn’t even all that big yet. About 1/2 the size I would consider a keeper adult. Much larger PS witnessed this evening.

I can’t have saugeye or HSB as I live in a nanny state. HSB would be so much fun!

I have had walleye, but they failed due to lack of forage when I stocked everything at once (except for FHM which were established). I should have ladder stocked. Getting them again is a consideration.

I can’t get smallmouth anywhere near me unless I bucket stock, but don’t want to do that. I would prefer those, and not worry about single sexing as much. That leaves me with LMB or walleye.

Talk to Sunil, he may know of someone closer, he's in Pa.

liquids - what is your objection to bucket stocking SMB? Just curious.

Just potential introduction of disease. Plus the best place to net smaller ones is 3 hours away in the thousand Islands. Our local reservoirs and lakes are mostly LMB. I rarely see or catch a SMB.

I digress, but we have two excellent beautiful nearby lakes: Canadice Lake, and Hemlock Lake. Both are reservoirs for the city of Rochester, and they are pristine lakes. No cottages, and only motorboats with less than 10hp. Full of healthy fish, and very low pressure on the fishery. When I kayak there, LMB everywhere.

How long are your BCP? You shared that your BCP are not reproducing but do you get recruitment of YP into 5" and larger sizes? Is the reason you don't want reproduction from LMB or Walleye or HSB(if you could) to protect the YP? What length are the PS that were recruited this year?

How would you describe your goals? Is your focus for balance where the predators grow modestly and prey grow above average? Or is your focus on the panfish where you would like to see robust growth of them?