This will be my last update on this thread until the next batch of RES get here.
Yesterday I noticed there were four small panfish working at bedding on a gravel patch in about 2' of water. Curious, I thought, since the only panfish in my pond are the 50 RES that I bought and caged last month.
Then the dim bulb got a little brighter. Three days after I put the cage in I had it just sitting on the bottom of the pond. Daughter was out there playing with her Doberman that thinks it's a Lab. Dog blasted off into the pond, ran over the cage, and knocked it over onto its side.
A few days later when I moved the cage I discovered that the ~40 fish in the cage had turned into ~20 fish.
So a few of them escaped when the cage was tipped over.
Anyway, I figured that since the fish that were still in the cage were all now healthy, feeding on pellets with gusto, and taking food from my hand, I might as well turn them loose to join the escapees and maybe pull off a spawn before summer is over. So that's what I did.
It will be interesting to see if I'm able to observe any of them taking pellets now when I feed. There are so many minnows in the pond it looks like a shark attack when food hits the water.
