Thought I would come back and add a few notes to this.
As my water temps are near 70, I've noticed activity has really picked up. Last week I noticed a small, light colored area that I thought was a 12-16" piece of concrete coming into view. The next afternoon I seen 2 more and came to the conclusion they were Redear Beds! I have 1 lone dish right beside a "TJ" smb nest structure that I believe is too big to be a RES so I think it's a smb.
As I have been feeding the last 3 weeks in the open pond I've noticed I have several of my feed trained YP showing up on a regular basis and the last 4-5 days they have brought a few guests, being some MUCH larger perch and a few smaller perch that were not part of my feed training. I've not seen a SMB take feed yet, nor a RES-and don't really expect to see RES but have seen where some folks see smb taking feed.
I seen my first fry of the summer FHM's about 5 days ago. I can take my fine mesh 3' net and run it for about 3-4' along the rocks and catch about (guessing here) several thousand FHM from fry to about an inch. I occasionally get a few small 1 to 1-1/2" YP in the fry net but never any of the 3-4" size.
I'm hoping to see some SMB fry but not sure my fish are sexually mature and somewhat expected them to spawn next year but we'll see.
My GSH are quite abundant and extremely high numbers of obviously gravid females-most seem to be in the 4-5-1/2" size range.
I find I'm still somewhat impatient but continue to tell myself anything good takes time to produce!
I've noticed a few patches of Sago pond weed starting to build and a very few cattails. Seems like what I believe to be eel grass is popping up in a spot or 2 so things are changing.
You guys with RES and SMB have any insight on when to expect to find YOY of both species I'd love to hear your thoughts.
