Yep. BH. BH have straight tails, CC have forked tails.
Hey! You got a pond just like mine! GSF and Bh's
You likely will start seeing BH fry soon, depending on where you live. I had three big black balls of them out in my old pond this last week. Last year the balls of BH fry hugged the banks and I actually dip netted a bunch of them out. This year they seem to be out in open water. That may be because I have a half dozen LMB in the 12"-16" range and did not when the BH spawn was last year.
Once the BH fry get a couple inches long and get away from the protection of the male BH, you will also start trapping them in the minnow traps. You can trap BH up to about 4" long in the minnow trap. They will need some bait to lure them in though.
Keep up with the GSF trapping and catching. You can make a difference. I thinned a bunch out last year and the ones I missed are now in the 5" range. Been pulling some of them out by hook and line. Catching about 50-50 GSF to BG ratio now so I know I'm making progress.
Me personally, I would return the good looking hybrids. But that is just me. They are some of the best fighting sunfish in the pond. I actually returned a 8" GSF to the pond after catching it. Just looked like too nice of a fish. I want to see how big it will get. That and I've been hanging around Dave Davidson too much...........
He likes those greenies!
A regular fish trap will trap the larger BH's pretty well. The main problem is keeping the little GSF from eating all the bait before the BH get in the trap. I mash up small GSF and put in as bait for the BH, although they really like fish food better.
My intention in my old pond with GSF and BH is to let the BG eventually out reproduce the GSF and the LMB to control the BH recruitment. And the pond will eventually turn around while I enjoy managing the GSF and eating the larger BH that make it past the LMB predation. BH taste pretty good when fed fish food and are young and grow fast.
As I see it, if you just want fun fishing for kids, you don't mind taking some time and some management to turn the pond around, and don't mind feeding a lot of fish that you eventually are going to kill (I kill them and put them back in the pond for CC and BH food), from what I have read you can turn a pond around.
Now if you are wanting to raise trophy fish in record time, GSF and BH might not be a good plan. But I have learned to make lemonade out of the lemons, and they are ok. You will definitely get a lot of line action while fishing with BH and GSF in the pond.
You only need to wait about 15 minutes between checking traps. Especially if you bait them with fish food.
