Start looking for YP eggs when the water stays 48F during the day. As far as my experience any type of branch like material will work. I use a few evergreen branches that get egg ribbons, although most of my branches are twiggy small dogwood trees. Some members have seen the ribbons inside fish traps. I am not sure of the laying process but I surmise the ribbon as it works its way out of the vent, dangling, as it is fertilized, then as it is fully extruded, it is draped over some structure or it falls to the bottom in a clump. The ribbon is pretty elastic but can be torn especially as it is lifted from the water.

To get decent YP recruitment with LMB, I think one should remove all the bass possible. Some ponds I deal with that remove lots of bass have success. Then when you see numerous small perch showing up in catches or traps then reduce the number of bass annually being removed. This means you should be keeping a record of how many LMB are removed each year. Also noting the sizes removed will eventually be helpful.

The other option for helping YP survive to harvestable sizes is to have a lot of pond area (25%-30%) or more of weedy habitat. Most pond owners will not tolerate this many pond weeds. You might be fortunate enough to combine some forms of the two above methods and remove just fair numbers of bass but not all you catch combined with having some lesser amount of weed cover. Numbers of bass to be removed will be dependent on each different conditions in each pond and amount of cover. YP need good cover with BIG mouthed bass are present. You can't put a mouse in a bathtub with a cat and expect the mouse to survive. In the correct combination the two bass removal and weed methods could work. Small YP are also very vulnerable to predation by catfish who eat YP at night when YP rest on the bottom.

YP populations with males present are prolific. If you have egg laying and are not regularly seeing young or juvenile YP each fall or spring then you need to remove more predators or have more weeds / cover if the goal is to have decent numbers of YP as panfish.

Last edited by Bill Cody; 02/27/21 03:23 PM.

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