stocking new pond for big BG

[Jim Ketchum]

Next spring/summer I will start stocking a new pond and want to grow big bluegill. Any sugggestions on buying the right brood stock? What are the keys to growing them fast?

[Tony Livingston]

I see by your profile that you're in Iowa, so you need a northern strain BG. Coppernose will not do well for you. You might drop our very own Dr. Bruce a PM, and see if there will be any of his "Condello" strain  available for purchase this spring. I believe there is an individual or two who delivers them for stocking, from time to time....... If not, then a reputable hatchery should be able to supply you with "regular" northern strain fish. I'm assuming you are not talking about hybrid gills', that's a subject unto itself.

What are your goals for this pond? Do you intend to manage for any species other than BG? Those details matter greatly in the scheme of things, as far as management strategy is concerned.

If I had to list the keys to growing big BG, I would start with these basics:

Plan on feeding your BG a high quality food, with fish meal as it's protein source.

Maintain a high population density of smaller 6-12" Largemouth Bass.

Return the largest males to the water.

 

There are many other factors that figure into the equation, but I would put those three items at the top of the list.

Jim, you might also consider heading over to PondBoss.com, and cruising through the forums. There is an unbelievable amount of info on growing big Bluegill over there. It would be well worth your time, just be prepared to spend your evenings reading through a TON of material!

 

[Walt Foreman]

Stocking quality fish makes a big difference - get the best genetics you can find.  Also, don't stock hybrids - Tony may disagree with me, but pure northern-strain bluegill have been found to grow bigger over the course of their life span than the hybrids.  The hybrids grow faster at first, but over time the pure-strains overtake them, and the pure-strains also tend to live longer.  The Illinois state record bluegill weighed three and a half pounds, and was a pure northern-strain; the Kentucky state record weighed over four, and was also a northern-strain bluegill.  And the biggest drawback to hybrids is that they regress significantly in genetic potential after the first generation, whereas pure-strain do not.

 

You might try to get hold of some Condello-strain fingerlings.  I don't think Bruce still raises them, but there are a few people who have bought from him and have them in their ponds, and might sell you some.

 

In your area, think about stocking largemouth bass fingerlings a few months before the bluegill to make sure the bluegill don't overpopulate.  In northern ponds a common problem is the bluegill spawning before the bass are big enough to control the offspring, so some pond managers recommend stocking the bass first in your area.  At the very least, stock the bass at the same time as the bluegill, and stock a high density of bass - I'd suggest 150 per acre. 

 

Stock low numbers of bluegill - I wouldn't stock more than 250 fingerlings per acre.  And definitely get the best stock you can get.

 

Stock fathead minnows a few months before stocking the bass to give them time to spawn and fill the pond.

 

One thing you might think about is establishing grass shrimp before stocking any fish.  They're  a favorite food item of bluegill; if you can get some plant life (it's best to stock plants that won't take over the entire pond, such as corkscrew eelgrass or dwarf sagittaria) growing, they should do well.  The species to stock in your area would be Palaemonetes kadiakensis - there's a hatchery in Nebraska, Fattig Fish, that sells them.  If you have the patience to stock them a few or several months before stocking any fish, your bluegill will grow faster from the start, and have an extra food source they wouldn't have had otherwise.

 

Installing an automatic feeder is the single biggest thing you can do to grow trophy bluegill.  In a six-acre pond, ideally you would have at least two feeders, three if money is not an issue.  Get quality feeders - the cheapos will break down or tear up (or get torn up by raccoons) within a year or less of purchase.  Texas Hunter, Sweeney, and Diamond feeders are to me the best - I won't sell other brands because I spend too much time repairing them.  Feed a high-quality, premium fish food that's fishmeal-based and at least 40% protein, preferably 45% or more - Silver Cup, Cargill, and Aquamax are good brands.  Match the size of the pellet to the size of the fish - you can feed even fingerlings with the right size pellet, 2.5mm would be about right for fingerlings.  Then move to larger pellets as the bluegill get larger and can eat them.

 

Aeration makes a big difference - it not only can prevent fish kills in summer and winter, but it also gives you more water to grow fish in, as thermoclines form in ponds that aren't aerated in the summer.  Your fish will grow faster from the optimal oxygen levels.

 

Release all the bass you catch - this will keep the bluegill numbers low so the few that survive to adulthood have many times more food resources available per fish than they would in crowded conditions. 

 

Don't stock any species that competes with bluegill for food: no shad, no golden shiners, no tilapia.  Not only will these species compete for food with your target species, but they'll take predation pressure from the bass off the bluegill so that they overpopulate, and once they overpopulate their growth slows drastically even if they're being fed.

 

Don't keep any fish at all the first year after stocking, and after that only keep bluegill between 7" or 7.5" and 9", and not more than thirty or forty 'gills per acre per year.  Keep most of the females you catch - some 'gill enthusiasts keep all the females, but I personally release the big ones. 

 

Don't stock catfish or grass carp as they'll eat most of your pellet food so the bluegill can't get it.

 

I sell feeders and aeration systems, so let me know if I can help on those fronts.

[Tony Livingston]

Walt, I don't disagree with anything you said, in fact, I agree with nearly all of it. I do think that there are a couple of points that need clarification. Record fish become records for a reason...they are unusual, not the norm. Sure, the potential is there, but it doesn't mean that they will all achieve record, or even close to record, size. The definition of a trophy Bluegill is relevant to your location. As an example, in my area a 1 lb BG will earn you a spot on the wall at the local bait shop. A 1.5 lb BG will get your picture in the paper, and some fleeting celebrity status. A 2lb. BG would probably earn you a statue on the courthouse lawn.

Personally, I wouldn't recommend HBG for a six acre lake. I feel they are best suited to smaller ponds, under 2 acres. I have 5 ponds of my own, but the HBG are only in one of them... the others contain native BG. HBG are a niche fish, not at all suited to every situation. However, when used in the proper context, by someone who understands their specific management requirements, they will do very well.

Most advice given regarding growing big, native BG, centers on keeping their numbers low and in check, and rightfully so. With HBG, there is almost no need to worry, as their severe male bias will nearly prohibit successful recruitment, provided a predatory species is present. This allows the stocking of much higher numbers of HBG, compared to BG. The fact that successive generations exhibit degradation should not be an issue if proper management techniques are utilized, as there will be little to no offspring survive to maturity.

It's similar to a farmer who plants hybrid corn. He doesn't collect any seed material from that crop to plant next season, he buys fresh seed. The same with HBG. You keep a continual rotation of different age classes of fish in the pond at all times.

HBG have larger mouths than native BG, allowing them to utilize food sources that BG cannot... that equals growth.

This is subjective, but it has been my experience that a HBG will fight harder than a comparably sized BG... everyone who fishes my HBG pond agrees, as well.

I have found very little on northern strain BG regarding genetics, or to be more specific, hatcheries that advertise their northern BG's pedigrees as being better than average, excluding Bruce's of course... , and can back it up with some proof. Walt, I would be greatly interested in finding a source of improved genetics for a future project, if you would be kind enough to share with me?

Again, not disagreeing or arguing, just clarifying.

[Timbaux65]

Rid your pond of turtles and alligators (doubt you got any of those, ha) but also gar and any serious predator fish until you have a healthy population.

 

My cousin had someone throw an alligator in his pond, and in 2 years time the fish were almost all gone.

[dick tabbert]

I'm sorry I didn't get this information when I had my pond dug. All my information came from the Ohio DNR. I didn't buy there fish but I did listen when they told me how and what to stock. The catfish was the worst. I do have some big cats but my bluegills have suffered for it.

[Tony Livingston]

Dick, that's a pretty common scenario. The truth is, growing big BG in a small pond requires some sacrifices. In a small BOW, you have to commit to the BG as the primary objective, to the possible detriment of all other species present. It's not so bad in a big pond or lake, as there is more room to accomodate larger specimens of different varieties.

Unfortunately, the DNR usually opts for what they consider a balanced fishery, with a typical stocking plan including Bluegill/Redear, Channel Catfish, and Largemouth Bass, with stocking numbers favoring the Bass. That can be hard to maintain in a pond of less than an acre, and lots of times it comes unbalanced a few years down the road.

Channel Catfish, along with Crappie, can be difficult  to manage successfully in a small pond.

 

[Walt Foreman]

You make some good points, Tony.  I know that the consensus on hybrids is that they have poor spawning success; but I've seen the opposite at least once, and it caused a big problem that I haven't been able to solve up to this point - this particular pond is the only one I've ever worked with for more than a year without turning around the bluegill population.

 

It's a four-acre pond, just down the hill from my best pond, owned by the same owner of that best pond along with two other neighbors.  One of the neighbors stocked it - without first consulting with the other two who had gone in equally on the $50K it cost to dig the pond - in the fall of 2008.  He stocked 400 hybrid bluegill - and 1200 channel catfish.  So the pond started out badly out of whack from the start. 

 

When I first started working with it in 2009, the catfish were a big problem, as they would hog the food from the bluegill.  But I caught several of them out, and the neighbor who had stocked them caught some, and his friends caught some, and, while still a problem, they're not as much so; now the problem is bluegill overpopulation, and, I'm pretty sure, genetic deterioration.  I didn't think there were a great deal of hybrids when I installed a feeder two years ago; there weren't a huge number of them feeding at the feeder.  But one day I was fertilizing the pond in a shallow area, and I kept seeing small, what looked to be stunted bluegill, 2-4", darting away from the boat.  Then after a neighbor incident the feeder had to be moved closer to that shallow area, and suddenly there was the familiar piranha-like feeding of hundreds/thousands of small bluegill that indicates overpopulation.  And most of these fish were hybrids, but they looked to be second- or third-generation, F1s or F2s.  Then the following year more fish that looked like pure-strain northern bluegill, but were almost invariably stunted badly, started showing up; the pond was dry before stocking, so they weren't an old stunted population; I considered the possibility that northern-strain had swum down from the pond up the hill, but those fish have great genetics so that didn't make sense.

 

The only conclusion I have been able to come up with for the many stunted bluegill in this pond that look awful despite high-protein food and the hundreds of largemouth I've stocked to thin them out, is that they're offspring of the hybrids that display enough characteristics of their northern-strain bluegill ancestry to look like pure-strain, but are actually badly regressive offspring of the hybrids. 

 

I even stocked 500 coppernose from American Sportfish in October 2010, and I catch a few of those fish here and there and they're growing well and are healthy; but for every one of them I catch, I catch two or three that look like northern-strain, but are some of the most pitiful-looking bluegill you'll ever see.  I've never worked with a more frustrating pond.

 

Part of it may be that I just haven't gotten the bass built up enough yet - I've stocked over 250 adult bass ranging from 8-10" to feed-trained over a pound each, but they haven't gotten ahead of the bluegill yet.  Some of the hybrids somehow made the trek up the hill despite the four-foot vertical leap they would have had to make to get to the drain pipe for the upper pond, and one of those is the one-and-three-quarter pounder that my cousin caught in August.  And that pond has so many pound-class bass that you catch as many or more of them in a day of fishing for bluegill, as you do bluegill.

 

But the moral of this story is, I feel pretty sure I'm seeing firsthand what a negative impact on genetics hybrid bluegill can have in a pond.  It's the only explanation that makes sense in this situation.

 

One more thought on hybrids versus northern-strain: I agree, mostly, with your assertion, Tony, that the state record northern-strains I mentioned were rare fish.  But on the other hand, I have read more than one study that found that northern-strain do eventually get larger than pure-strain.  The Maryland state record, like Illinois', is also three and a half pounds; the giant bluegill being caught out of Lake Barrett in California, the one public lake arguably even better than Perris from what I've read and according to Jeff, are northern-strain.  I first got interested in feeding bluegill when I was a teenager and read an article in Fishing Facts that claimed you could grow bluegill to three pounds if you fed them daily with fish chow - and the first page of the article had a photo of a bunch of bluegill, some of which looked to be three pounds, really enormous, feeding in clear water inside a PVC feeder ring.  And those were pure, northern-strain bluegill. 

 

It may be a weak point for my case, but I posted on here back in the summer about a pure northern-strain that was caught by the owner of my best pond, the pond up the hill from the worst one, which he released without getting a photo because his camera was in the house and the neighbor's dog was trying to eat the fish; the owner has always struck me as a pretty honest guy, and he said he measured the fish by the breadth of his hand which is 9.5", and said the bluegill was ten inches tall and "at least" fourteen inches long, and "very fat."  I'm hoping that fish is still alive, and gets caught by someone with a camera handy (or better yet weighed on a certified scale since it would probably beat the state record by eight to sixteen or more ounces) before it dies.

 

A somewhat stronger point: one of the fisheries faculty at Auburn told me that the world record was a northern-strain bluegill.    

So, to wrap up my case for northerns, I love your passion for hybrids, Tony!  I just believe strongly in their unsung counterparts, the jilted northern-strain bluegill.  I feel that, under proper management conditions,  they'll outperform hybrids, without the worry of genetic problems like I've experienced.

 

As to sources of genetically-superior northern-strain, Bruce would definitely be the best source I know of, since I've seen dozens of photos of his fish and the results are inarguable and awesome.  I do know of one hatchery that's actually in Iowa, the Jim Frey hatchery, that claims to specialize in big bluegill, and states on their website that they've been selectively breeding them for many years.  One other hatchery that has selectively bred northern-strain is Zett's out of Pennsylvania; they also say they've been doing it for many years.  I've never stocked any of their bluegill, but I know that a Pond Boss member from West Virginia who's a bluegill nut stocked his pond with bluegill from Zett's, and he has caught 12"+ bluegill out of his pond, says he's caught 13"+, and those are pure northern-strain bluegill.  I have ordered other species from Zett's three different times, and never had a single fish arrive dead though the fish had been shipped air freight.

[Tony Livingston]

1200 Channel Catfish? Lord have mercy.

In the absence of a more efficient predator, I will concede that HBG would do what comes natural, and the results might well be less than desireable. However, the timeline in the pond you mentioned has me concerned. If the pond was stocked with hybrids in fall of 08', and they managed to pull off a spawn in spring of 09', then you shouldn't have noticed anything much bigger than fry when you started working with the pond in 09', definitely not enough time for an F3. A HBG and a BG can be virtually indistinguishable from one another until they are 3" or so.

The fact that that whopper HBG was caught in the upper pond hints at human intervention in my mind. I find it unlikely, but not impossible, that they could ascend a 4" elevation to the overflow. More likely someone released it into the upper pond. Had the upper pond been in place before the lower? I would think it almost a sure thing that native gills escaped into the lower pond through the overflow, where they at least helped the HBG overrun the place in the absence of predators.

I have also seen one instance where a less than desireable hatchery failed to kill off a grow-out pond that contained HBG, before restocking it with more HBG. The result was a shipment of HBG that contained some F2's, sold as F1's, a year later. Bad news for the guy purchasing the fish, but not really the HBG's fault.

 As you know, HBG are typically recommended to be stocked with no other Lepomids, as they will readily cross with them. I'm wondering if that's exactly what you've got there. You have eyes on the pond and I don't,  and you know far more about it than I do. I'm just kicking around some ideas.

1200 Channels?? Really? Wow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Walt Foreman]

Yes, my heart sank when I learned the number of catfish that had been stocked in the pond.  But they're not the main issue now - it's the hybrids.  I do suspect, as you mention, that perhaps F1s or even F2s were stocked, rather than first-generation hybrids.  Also, I do know that fingerlings were not stocked: the neighbor who bought the fish said the bluegill he stocked were larger, up to 6". 

 

I did consider the possibility that someone stocked some hybrids into the upper pond, but the owner swears he didn't, and he doesn't allow many people to fish, and they all know that the pond is managed (by me) and that they have no rein to do anything of that sort, so it would be pretty brazen on the part of a friend of the owner, and therefore seems doubtful.  His house sits right on the pond, and he generally doesn't allow people to fish when he's not there, so that route seems improbable.  Another family has a house on the pond as well and owns the other half of it, and they get along really well with my friend (I realize this is rare) and watch the pond when he's not home; anyone who comes to fish has to drive by their house first, and park in front of Mac's house, so tampering with the lake would be difficult at best.  I do know that there are several hybrids in there now - we typically catch at least one every trip (and they're usually 9" or better).  But the ones we catch in that upper pond have great body dynamics, much more of a bluegill shape than the elongated body of a green sunfish.

 

Yet another possibility for how the hybrids got into the upper pond, that seems unlikely: there are green sunfish in the pond.  We don't catch many, maybe three or four a year as the wolfpacks of young bass keep them in line; and, I managed this pond for ten years from 1987-1996 and never caught a hybrid, which makes it seem less probable that the hybrids we're catching now are naturally-occurring.

 

Your suggestion that the poor-condition bluegill in the lower pond are offspring from bluegill that have come down from the upper pond and the hybrids, did occur to me, but it seems to me that if enough bluegill had come down from the upper pond to spawn significantly, they would be getting big now even if their offspring aren't, since they have good genetics.

 

I'm hoping the coppernose will muscle the hybrids out of the way and enforce their genetic superiority.  I'll get the pond straight eventually.  Maybe the bluegill just need daily pep talks, or an exercise video.

[Tony Livingston]

Walt, it is my understanding from talking to folks who initially stocked HBG, then switched over to BG, that given some time the native BG will "assimilate", for lack of a better word, the HBG to the point that hybrids are no longer caught.

 If correct, I can't help but wonder if this is caused by the HBG breeding true, and by virtue of the low numbers of females present basically becoming extinct, or perhaps by crossing with the native BG they eventually lose their distinctive HBG identity, and are absorbed into the native BG population.

I wonder how many generations it would take to eliminate any visual cues as to their HBG origins, and if the possibility of a regressive mutation would always be present.

Jim, I apologize for jacking your thread. I hope you were able to gather something that you could use out of all this.

I'll be quiet now and let you ask the questions that you need answered.

[Walt Foreman]

I enjoyed our discussion, Tony.  I am hoping (and have been hoping) that the theory you allude to, i.e. the pure-strain bluegill supplanting the hybrids over time, does indeed take place in this particular pond.  I may stock some more intermediate or large coppernose this spring to help that process along.

 

Now I'll take your cue and make a new post with a suggestion for Jim...

[Walt Foreman]

Hey Jim, my first recommendation for where to get fish would be what Tony said - send Bruce Condello a message on here to see if he can hook you up with some of his fish.  I know there's one guy on the Pond Boss forum who lives in Nebraska and had a pond full of them last year and was giving them away.  Bruce may know of someone closer to you who has some.

 

As far as where you get your largemouth, any hatchery will do - just don't buy feed-trained bass, because they'll take a lot of the pellets away from the bluegill, and won't do as good of a job controlling the bluegill (believe me, I've learned this the hard way after being assured by a fish dealer near me that they would eat plenty of bluegill) as will bass that don't eat pellets.  Generally these days, any largemouth bigger than 6" or so that you get from a hatchery, will be feed-trained because they can get them to the larger sizes quicker and more economically on the pellets than on live food.