As noted above it is doubtful that HSB by themselves at regular stock density of under 60-100/ac will control normal BG recruitment. As planned your chances of succeeding are marginal. Type of habitat will have a big influence on the ability of HSB to prey on BG.

IMO your chances of succeeding will improve if you initially stock HSB at higher densities of maybe 130-200/ac. This will put excess pressure on the first year class of BG - an important item for the initial plan IMO. Note that overstocking of predator is likely to result in slower than optimum growth of predator. This assumes at least a couple things: 1. you will regularly monitor the BG recruitment and have the ability to manually make adjustments of strong year class BG recruitment. Over abundant BG fingerling (0.5"-2.0") will lead to over population, poor growth, and food shortages that can strongly affect adult BG growth rates. 2. You use a stocking ladder where HSB are added annually or regularly to achieve or maintain proper recruitment of small BG. This normal size distribution of predators (fingerling to old adult) is a feature of balanced fisheries. Small HSB are primarily the ones responsible for consuming the 0.7"-1.7" BG. Larger HSB generally ignore smallest sizes of forage.

The number of new HSB stocked will be dependent on several features such as number harvested, natural mortality, and size of current or pervious year's BG year class. It is important to adequately control or reduce YOY panfish because they, as an overpopulated group or year class grow, put undue pressure on the food chain that detracts from the entire fishery. Thus the whole fishery or portions thereof become unbalanced and grow poorly. Then in these instances, this is where manual management is required - population adjustment - seining, trapping, electroshocking, harvesting. When it is needed and when to stop adjusting are key components that determine the degree of success. It is not generally a simple technique for managing specialized stockings of unique fishery combinations.

It has been posted here that pellet fed SMB can be manipulated to consume small BG (Shawn Banks - Midwest Lake Management). When SMB are fed pellets and overabundant fingerling BG occur, stopping the pellet feeding until excess small BG disappear due to SMB reverting to predation on small fish is a management option that has had some success. This technique may (?) work for HSB-BG populations. SMB are definitely not the same behaving fish as HSB which has to be taken into account. This may not be as simple as it sounds. IMO for this to succeed it requires that one has the ability to fairly accurately and intuitively evaluate fish numbers and recognize when pellet feeding needs to be stopped and resumed. We have to remember that S.Banks is a professional experienced fishery biologist with the ability to properly monitor and evaluate fish populations.
Reference post where Shawn Banks explains this technique:
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.ph...true#Post320750

Last edited by Bill Cody; 12/06/13 09:35 AM.

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