snrub, coming late to this but when I look at your pictures of the RES taken out of the forage pond and the RES you captured in your main pond they look the same to me. How can you tell that the ones you netted out of your main pond where not the forage ones that you put into the main pond? Just because they were in a different location then where you bucket stocked them?
It really doesn't matter so much right? You can keep adding from your forage pond whether you are getting recruitment or not in the main pond?
I had captured the ones in my forage pond, transported them to the RES dedicated pond, released them, then immediately went to the other side of the RES pond to see if I could catch anything with the cast net. I did catch some indicating I had recruitment in the RES pond. I knew they were not the ones I had just put in because they were smaller than any of the fingerlings I introduced. Had they been the same size I might have just figured they swam fast to the other side of the pond. But they were significantly smaller than the ones I just dumped in.
The recruitment in the RES pond would have been from adult size RES that originally came from my forage pond. So the source of all the genetics came from the RES in my forage pond. The difference being the fingerlings I introduced came directly from the forage pond and the other ones came from recruitment in the RES pond that came from parents that came from the forage pond.
The only other possibility is I also stocked 200 fingerlings this spring from Dunn's fish farm. But they were only 2" long in the spring and I doubt they spawned, although it is possible. It is more likely the fingerlings from the RES pond came from the adult RES that were stocked also this spring.....that came from the forage pond. And even the RES in the forage pond originally came from Dunn's a couple years ago.
The only other RES genetics I have are in my main pond (not the forage pond or the RES pond) and they came from Wallace Fish Farm in Kansas. And I had caught and put a couple of those original RES in my forage pond along with the original RES stocked from Dunn's. So there is potentially some additional genetics introduced.
When my main 3 acre pond was originally stocked by Wallace, there were a few RES mixed in with the BG. He showed me a few as they were being stocked. But the numbers were very small. I would guess under 5% but that is just a guess. So when I built the forage pond I stocked only FHM and RES, thinking I would raise RES fingerlings and add to what was very small numbers of RES in my main pond. And I have done that for a couple years now. Except the forage pond has never produced the number of RES I expected. The culprit? GSF contamination. I got lots and lots of RESxGSF hybrids out of the forage pond and a smaller number of pure RES. Till this year.
I have been throwing the cast net and discovered that is the way to harvest the RES fingerlings out of the forage pond. Trapping them I only had marginal luck. But in the last three sessions of cast netting I have harvested well over 200 mostly 3" RES fingerlings, a few smaller and a few larger. To date I have put a little over 150 of these fingerlings into the RES pond, about 40 in my sediment pond and 75 or so into my main 3 acre pond (53 just tonight).
Next year I should have RES out the wazoo, with the one acre RES pond dedicated to only RES with FHM and SMB in the pond additionally to support the growth and control of the RES.
Why do I like RES so much? Don't have a clue. They just fascinate me. Now I am finally getting some success in raising them.
Clear as mud?
I have 5 ponds that I designate with names. Main pond (3 acres), forage pond (1/20th acre), sediment pond (1/10th acre), old pond (1 acre), and RES pond (also 1 acre). Not confusing to me, but may be to others if they are not familiar with my naming convention.
