Do you love big bluegill?

Green Sunfish?

Can someone tell me what this is, this is 1 of 3 kinds of sunfish I caught last week from my pond.

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Comment by Zach Pierce on June 19, 2012 at 9:34am: Here is an earlier post of a GSF from my pond, you can see they are different.

Comment by Zach Pierce on April 1, 2011 at 9:57pm: So would you recomend I add more bass then. I stocked 20-30 3-4 inch fish but many probably got eaten by the GSF.

I also put in another 10 in the 8-13 inch range.

I would think that all of them would have a chance of spawning this year so not sure if I should add more or not

if so what sizes should I add

Comment by Walt Foreman on March 17, 2011 at 9:09pm: It is easier to manage a small pond for trophy bluegill, simply because a trophy bluegill is several pounds smaller than a trophy bass and thus you can grow many more per acre. Also, bluegill train very easily to pellets, whereas bass won't eat them unless you buy them already trained, and even then some go off pellets.

I prefer not to keep any bass at all from a pond I'm managing for trophy bluegill - I want every single hungry bass mouth I can get, in that pond. Anyone who tells you you have to catch out the bigger bass so they don't eat all your big bluegill, probably hasn't grown many big bluegill.

The biggest key to growing outsized bluegill is to cut down on their competition for food, both from other species (GSF for instance, but also tilapia or shiners or anything else that competes with them) and from their brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, etc. You can definitely grow trophy bluegill in Oklahoma; you just need a very high density of bass, as low a density of competing species as possible (preferably none), and a low density of bluegill, with an optimized food chain for them (from fertilizing, and feeding high-protein food at least a couple times a day during prime periods, such as now).

Comment by Zach Pierce on March 17, 2011 at 5:24am: So if I were to keep a few of the larger bass in the pond how many should it be?

I have tagged a few LMB and may leave them in if ever caught again, but pull the others out.

I like to catch bass as they are fun, plus just neat to see how large I could grow one, but with a small BOW like mine I would think BG or CC would be a better option, with a few other fish as a bonus.

I am not sure I could grow any trophy fish in my pond, but I will give it a shot, that is assuming I can keep my kids and Mother-In-Law from keeping every large fish to eat.

Comment by Walt Foreman on March 16, 2011 at 8:12am: You just have to decide what species you want to manage the pond for. It's not possible to maximize a small pond for multiple different species; it's nearly impossible to do in a large lake, and certainly impossible in a small pond unless you rely on feed-trained species (you could have some big bass and bluegill both in a small pond if the bass were feed-trained, but you already have non-feed-trained bass so that's not as much of an option).

Comment by Zach Pierce on March 16, 2011 at 4:55am: Well I am open to anything that will make this the best pond I can have for the size. As of right now it should have just about every fish someone in Oklahoma would consider stocking here.

Any other ideas?

Comment by Walt Foreman on March 9, 2011 at 7:56pm: Depends on what you're managing the pond for. If you want big bass, which is hard to do in a pond of an acre or less because you only have enough room for a handful of big bass, then stocking the extra forage will get them bigger. If on the other hand you want big bluegill, don't stock any extra forage, because the extra forage will take some of the bass predation pressure off the bluegill, and the green sunfish, and allow both to overpopulate. You'll never get the green sunfish thinned out if you stock shiners or goldfish, and you could end up with a fish kill due to overloading the carrying capacity of the pond. If you want big bluegill, you should have a very high density of bass in the pond, to the point that you catch almost as many bass in the pound range while fishing for bluegill as you do bluegill.

Comment by Zach Pierce on March 9, 2011 at 1:01pm: I thought that is what it was, pond still full of them even with the Bass at 10-15 inches now. I bet this years LMB spawn will hammer them.

If I can get a few more inches on this one it will be ready to eat.

I am trying to work out a deal with the bait shope to either purchase some or trade for either FHM, Shinners, Goldfish, or something else. What do you think about this idea?