First HBG 6/17/2012

Comment

Comment by Zach Pierce on June 21, 2012 at 7:49am

Ok I do have 2 other ponds that I may be willing to kill off and try to start over, but the issue with them is they are old, turbid, and not very deep.

So would it be possible for me to rotenoning these and restock or would I be wasting time and money doing so if they are turbid and shallow?

Would I have some options with turbid ponds if I wanted to go that route.

At one time I think I was told I could put Bullheads in one but we all know without some sort of predator I doubt I would be able to keep them in control, and I am not a big fan of them, but maybe if they were fed they may taste better.

Just would like to use these for something beside cattle bathtubs.

Any thoughts on what my options would be as the way these 2 other ponds stand?

Comment by Walt Foreman on June 20, 2012 at 7:31pm

The turbidity is likely being caused by the tilapia.  Which, by the way, are terrible for a bluegill pond because they're eating most of your pellets so the bluegill don't get many, and they take bass predation pressure off the bluegill/GSF/HBG so they overpopulate more.  

Comment by Walt Foreman on June 20, 2012 at 7:28pm

People often balk at rotenoning a pond because they think of all the money and effort they've already put into trying to get it turned around with the fish already in it.  To me, a better way to think about it is simply, if you could choose between having a pond with no problems and ideal conditions and really fast-growing fish six months from now, or a pond in which you're still spinning your wheels with no end in sight...You could still be guessing and compensating and trying to fix it three or four years down the road with fishing no better than you have right now, or possibly even worse if the genetics deteriorate - or, you could wipe the slate clean and be on track for the pond of your dreams.  I just hate to see you keep spinning your wheels because I've done it myself.  Right now you're managing a crap shoot; if you start over, you won't have to guess whether you're on the right track because the fish will grow so fast you'll almost be able to see them getting bigger day by day.

Comment by Zach Pierce on June 20, 2012 at 3:41pm

I was afraid you would say to kill it off, and I may consider it in time, but for now I am not sure I am willing to. Had I known the GSF were in there before I stocked it, I would have at least killed them off. I will have to say that I do not catch too many of the 2-3 inch fish like we used to. Could not even hit the water with a hook. They would hit FHM longer than they were.

But it sounds like I need to start bringing the above fish home for dinner rather than try to grow them out as I may not get too far with them since they are FX's. I suppose I can handle this. I did have a GSF last night for dinner that came from this pond on Sunday and it was tasty.

Not sure why the water is so turbid as this was a nice clear pond. I hope to catch some of the large BG just so I can post a pic on here and see what you think, but who knows when that will happen as I am sure they are more busy spawning right now.

Comment by Walt Foreman on June 20, 2012 at 10:26am

Turbidity is three strikes for growing big bluegill - I thought I noticed as much in one of your photos.  There are several ways to clear a pond; gypsum often will do it; aluminum phosphate is also often used; sometimes fertilizing a pond once or twice will replace the turbidity with a plankton bloom (awful conditions to ideal).  How big is the pond?  I suggested this on the thread for your other recent photo, but I'll repeat here: you would be miles, miles ahead to start over from scratch with this pond.  It would end up costing you much less money, and you'd have the pond in better condition six months from now than you might have three years from now if you continue trying to rebuild the Titanic as it sinks.  Unless I'm confusing multiple ponds (not clear whether you own one or multiple ones), you have way too many species of fish in the pond for its size, and, other than the small bass that recently showed up, really bad conditions for growing big bluegill.  You could struggle for years with bad genetics due to the HBG and GSF; if you started over, your pond would have the best fishing it's ever had within a year.

Vegetation would help the bluegill but it would also help the GSF and HBG, and, if the pure bluegill ever got ahead of the GSF and HBG the vegetation would make it easy for them to overpopulate, which would take years to correct (all over again).

This is a lesson I've had to learn the hard way myself.  Three years ago I thought I could turn any pond around without resorting to rotenone; I began working with several ponds that were badly overpopulated.  A couple of them are turning around, though even one of those still is significantly overpopulated and has a long way to go; two other ponds, and one large lake, are still overpopulated, and far short of where I thought I could have them by this time.  I've been very aggressive with management, stocking predators multiple times a year, removing inferior fish, feeding them like hogs, etc. - even ceasing fertilization in one lake to make it easier for the predators to mow up the bluegill and shad.  Part of what I think I'm observing is how much of a factor genetics play - once the genetic pool of a lake has been skewed toward stunting, it seems very difficult to correct.  Now I realize I would have been better off to renovate every one of them (rotenone) and start from scratch.  

Since you have turbidity issues anyway, you probably wouldn't even have to rotenone to start over - you could first try just adding a good quantity of aluminum sulfate, without the hydrated lime recommended to balance the pH, and there's a good chance that alone would kill all your fish, at the same time it gave you nice clear water.  If you needed to rotenone, this is the best time of year to do it because the rotenone would neutralize within a week or two (it neutralizes fastest in warmer water).  You could be stocking a new, clean pond two weeks from now.  The three-acre pond you've posted photos from before looks to have bluegill with pretty good genetics - if you went with a male-only pond you could get a few 6-8" fish from that pond, and within a year they'd be averaging a pound.

You won't believe how much faster bluegill grow in a newly-, properly-stocked pond until you see it with your own eyes.  And, the biggest northern-strain bluegill I've seen photos of, coming from a pond, have been from male-only ponds.  If you haven't seen them already, check out the dozens of photos of bluegill from 18 to 24 ounces that Theo Gallus has posted on here in the last couple years, all of which came from a male-only pond that's pretty small.

Comment by Zach Pierce on June 20, 2012 at 9:59am

Is there anything I can do to help the BG spawn this year and have more of them survive? There should be some trees and other limbs that have fallen in or pushed in when the pond was built but I have yet to add anything.

There is not much vegetation or FA this year for some reason and not sure why, it make fishing easier but not sure this is the best thing for the pond.

If I were to add some plants what would you recommend adding, I had water primrose on the other two ponds when they were nice Crappie holes. But now there are hardly any fish or vegetation on either of them, then again they are not very deep, extremely turbid, and old.

Comment by Walt Foreman on June 19, 2012 at 2:31pm

Catching lots of small largemouth is just something you have to deal with if you want big bluegill.  When I fish my best bluegill pond at the moment, the one that my most recent photos came from, we catch almost as many small bass as we do big bluegill.  I fish mostly with live bait, and your odds should be a little better that way, as opposed to with lures, of catching more bluegill.  Also, the small bass will generally frequent different areas of the pond than the bluegill, especially any larger bluegill.  Oftentimes I find the small bass shallower than the big bluegill as well.

Do you have any bluegill in the pond other than the HBG?  If not, your genetics are your biggest enemy right now, because the fish you posted photos of, while probably not 100% GSF, are definitely mostly GSF, and green sunfish won't grow nearly as large as bluegill even on a feeding program - and, to make matters worse, fish that had HBG as parents often have inferior genetics, some of the poorest genes of both parents.  

I know you thought about stocking some CNBG a while back.  Did you stock some CNBG, or northern-strain bluegill then?  If so, they'll eventually get big if you keep thinning out the GSF and HBG.  

If you don't have any pure-strain bluegill in the pond, you might think about rotenoning and starting over.  If I remember correctly you have a lot of different species in that pond, and conditions are a long way from being ideal for big bluegill.  The recent appearance of the small bass is the most promising development; but if the only bluegill you have are the "hybrids" that are mostly GSF, you don't have much.  You could of course always stock pure-strain bluegill now, but then you're putting them into already-crowded conditions if there are still good numbers of the GSF and mostly-GSF.  Whereas if you started over from scratch, with nothing but bluegill and largemouth fingerlings, in the proper numbers for growing big bluegill, within a year, feeding as you do now, you would have bluegill 7" or better, and within two years you'd be catching 9" bluegill.  Fingerlings are cheap, even pure-strain of good genetics; and, if you really wanted to turbo-start things, you could stock larger-size fish, say 4-5" bluegill and 4-6" bass.

Comment by Zach Pierce on June 19, 2012 at 2:00pm

Walt,

That was my thought for this year for sure. I only caught 2 GSF, 2 HBG, 2 Crappie, 3 CC. The LMB were hitting more than anything else. I guess this is what I want to happen if trying to grow Large BG. What bait or techniques should be used to target BG over the LMB?

Tony,

I was thinking the same and that she may have just dropped them as her stomach was really thin compared to the other HBG I caught that day.

Comment by Walt Foreman on June 19, 2012 at 10:04am

Zach, don't sweat a DO crash from largemouth - you'll never have as many largemouth in a pond as bluegill and GSF.  If you develop an oxygen problem it will be from the thousands of sunfish rather than the hundreds of bass.  If you are fortunate enough to have several of the small bass survive, they'll thin out your bluegill and GSF so that the water quality improves dramatically (in addition to allowing the sunfish to grow much faster).  I would recommend keeping no bass, at all, considering the state your pond is in (overpopulated with bluegill and GSF).

Comment by Tony Livingston on June 19, 2012 at 9:58am

I'm going with female.

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