coppernose-5-june-3-2013

Comment

Comment by Jacob Hill on June 4, 2013 at 6:53am

I would be lying if I said I knew a lot about the rust out or not issue but I think if you mashed the barbs down, and the hook was thin enough, then it should come out. I would assume that the fish would just work it around so much that it would come out.

Comment by Walt Foreman on June 3, 2013 at 8:40pm

I would think this one should make two pounds within a year or less as long as it suffers no ill effects from today.  We had a bad problem with fish swallowing the hook today even though I was probably rushing the clients to set the hook as soon as the float moved.  They even missed a few fish because of it, and yet somehow most of the fish they caught were hooked deep.  I don't even try to get the hook out when it's deep - cut the line and get the fish back in the water.  I had mashed down the barbs on the hooks last night, so at least the hooks in their gullets have no barbs.  The info out there on survival of deep-hooked fish when the line is cut is very contradictory; the Florida fish and game commission, for instance, claims that fish are able to form tissue around the hook, and that hooks often rust out quickly; but then there are other sources that paint a grimmer picture.  Considering these hooks were aberdeen (thin-wire) and bronze, not coated, I would think these fish have a decent chance; I hope so at least.  I went to Wal-Mart at 4:45 this morning to get some circle hooks, but they had none.

Comment by Jacob Hill on June 3, 2013 at 8:10pm

Two years!?!?!? That is unbelievable. I talked to the owner of a very healthy pond in Indiana and he said it was 5 years before his bluegill were 10". They were of course northern strain but still. Two years! Could those fish possibly grow to 2, even 3 pounds?

Comment by carl hendrix on June 3, 2013 at 7:55pm

well;; if and when you guys find a good scale-- please let me know to!! I need a better one also!!

Comment by Walt Foreman on June 3, 2013 at 7:49pm

Tony, I'm not sure which scale I'll get.  I'm not happy with any of the offerings out there.  Boga Grip has a great reputation, but they don't make a digital scale as far as I know, and it doesn't make much sense to get a scale with quarter-pound increments for weighing bluegill.  And most of the digital fishing scales, in my opinion, have very poor accuracy.  

I had a MBS-2010 infant scale that seemed to be reasonably accurate before I left it out in the rain, so I may end up getting another one of those.  They're not cheap.

Comment by Walt Foreman on June 3, 2013 at 7:46pm

Jacob, if I'm correct, this fish might be only two years old.  The pond that this fish came from did have some coppernose stocked into it in late summer of 2009, but they were in a cage; and then a snapping turtle got into the cage that December.  I'm pretty sure the turtle ate most of the fish that were in the cage, as I only saw a handful of coppernose out in the main pond after that; then in March of last year this pond had the depletion event, fish kill or poacher or otter, that cleaned out most of the fish in the pond.  After that event, I was not seeing any coppernose at the feeder, and out of the few bluegill caught, none were coppernose.

So in May of last year I transplanted forty coppernose from another pond on the property, a half-acre pond I call the grow-out pond, to this pond.  Those fish averaged about 6" when I transferred them, because they were crowded in the grow-out pond and not growing at their optimum rate.  Immediately after the transplant, I began seeing several of those coppernose coming to the feed whenever the feeder went off.

So they seemed to be almost growing before my eyes day to day, they were growing so fast; they had gone from a pond where they were significantly crowded, to a pond that had very few bluegill left in it, so they had all the food they wanted, both pellets and natural food.  Two and a half months after the transplant, the last week of July last year, Federico and his fishing buddy Roberto caught about ten coppernose between 8- 9" each, probably a ten to twelve ounce average weight, but they had tiny heads for their bodies.  So I'm pretty certain they were fish I had transplanted, as we didn't catch a single coppernose under 8", and considering I wasn't seeing any coppers at the feeder prior to the transplant and began seeing several right after, it just makes sense it was those fish we caught.  They had a growth explosion from going to a crowded pond to a pond with probably less than a tenth the density of what they had come from.  I've grown coppernose to 9" from fingerlings in one year, so in a way they were just realizing their full potential when they were put into an ideal environment.

The fish in the grow-out pond were stocked as fingerlings in May 2011.  So if I'm right, this fish is just over two years old.

Comment by Jacob Hill on June 3, 2013 at 6:28pm

Wow! What a perfect fish! I'm sure she's old but she isn't showing it.

Comment by Tony Livingston on June 3, 2013 at 6:22pm

Walt, I'm in the market for a new scale myself. Do you have one in mind you're thinking about?

Comment by Walt Foreman on June 3, 2013 at 6:14pm

Jim, it's funny you mention that, because 22 ounces seemed very light to me for this fish.  And, for that matter, some of the bluegill the two guys from Illinois caught a month ago when they fished with me that were registering as 20 or 21 ounces, seemed bigger than that; now I'm hoping I didn't get inaccurate weights on all those fish, but I'm suspecting maybe I did, because this fish seemed to me like it had to be in the range you suggest - it was really huge, and thick.  I've just been so broke that I've been reluctant to get a new better quality digital scale but I think I'm going to have to.

Comment by Leo Nguyen on June 3, 2013 at 4:53pm

A genetic mutant?! LOL Replicates itself when the time is right.

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next ›
• Page