Originally Posted by jpsdad
Originally Posted by esshup
Dave, my experience with them is just the opposite, they ate every last YOY fry from RES and YP that were spawned. In this particular pond there were no bass to act as predators, the customer wanted to stock the panfish at 50% recommended rate and let them reproduce in the pond before stocking the LMB. He didn't know that he had GSF in there - it was a wet spot in the woods that he turned into a pond.

Found out that if the woods flooded, there are GSF in the ditch next to the woods and they swarmed into the woods from the ditch.

I believe that the problem was not stocking the correct amount of fish in the first place, and waiting too long to put predators in there. The GSF were 2.5" long and full of eggs.

esshup,

From the sounds of it, it may be risky to add LMB fingerlings in 2" to 3" sizes. Is the plan to stock advanced fingerlings when the predators go in?

Somebody decided to bucket stock a few 14" LMB in the pond so the owner said to nuke it and start over. 14" LMB don't get to be that big and not be noticed - it there were only 2 in the pond, and 14" LMB is the lowest legal size that LMB can be kept on public waters here.

It was supposed to be a SMB/RES/YP pond with FHM and GSH. That is when we found out that the GSF ate everything that was spawned in the pond - there were 0 RES/YP/GSH that weren't the original stockers even though there was habitat in place for good reproduction. 0 FHM left and very few GSH. So the pond was restocked at the same rate as before (sigh) but there were no GSF in there. Smallmouth were stocked at advanced sizes from one of the other ponds on the property and they pulled off a spawn the following year.

Same problem with 2 other ponds on the property, although the nearest house is roughly 1/2 mile away. One pond now has CC in it, the 2nd pond has HBG in it. The way the ponds were constructed, there is no possible way that any surface water can run into the ponds - they are groundwater ponds in sandy soil. Those other 2 ponds were dry spots in the woods that were turned into pond areas.

The owner is now thinking about killing the other 2 ponds, digging them deeper (that's a story in itself, they only have 4' to 5' of water in them now) and starting over. All these ponds are 1 ac or slightly larger.

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3/4 to 1 1/4 ac pond LMB, SMB, PS, BG, RES, CC, YP, Bardello BG, (RBT & Blue Tilapia - seasonal).