Originally Posted by esshup
Originally Posted by nvcdl
Originally Posted by esshup
Originally Posted by nvcdl
Don't the bluegill fry and plankton make use of the bloom?

I added 70lbs of shiners to my slightly less than 2 ac pond last year and not many survived to breed. That said I think I may be seeing a few surviors now tho they may just be large fathead minnows. Suprisingly the fathead minnows seem to have become well established.

The shiners may have been consumed over the winter by any bass in the pond. If you can stock some more in the next few weeks, and you have grassy areas that are in less than 24" of water they might pull off a spawn this Spring if you can get shiners 3"-4" in length.

I stocked plenty of larger ones last year. i figure if none survived it is pointless to stock more.

That depends. If some survive and can pull off a spawn, you might have more survive than you stocked originally. It all depends on the cover you have in the pond. I stocked over 200 @ 9"-11" and they didn't last a year but that was because I didn't have cover for them to pull off a successful spawn.

I think some of my shiners survived.

Have seen some fish "kissing" on surface in evenings - one group looked to be 7" -9" or so. On another evening saw smaller size ones feeding. Pond has had a strong bloom going this year so hopefully a lot of fry will survive.