I Guess Size Does Matter

[wade johnson]

Hi Guys and Gals, I stocked my 3/4 acre pond four years ago with 300 copper nose BG....the pond also has bass and cats. The bluegill are now mostly in the seven to eight inch size with very few in the desired 9+ inch size. They quickly clean up, in just a couple of minutes, about a pound of feed twice a day, (Aquamax 600) so I don't think I am overfeeding. Would you suggest thinning out the population since the water just boils with fish at feeding time, or would you suggest increasing the amount of feed? Also, how do coppernose BG compare in size and growth rate with other BG. Thanks and good fishing, Wade

[Goose Pond Monster]

I would say you need to thin them out some.  It is my understanding that the copper nose gills grow quickly, but taper off and then they grow slowly. 

[Tony Livingston]

Wade, the rule of thumb suggests feeding all they will clean up in 10-15 minutes. If they're eating all the food in two minutes, I would increase the amount each day until you reach the point where it takes 10 minutes or so for the fish to clean the surface.

Also... Coppernose tend to exhibit faster growth than Northern BG's, but ultimate size potential is nearly equal between the two subspecies. After four years in your pond, I would've thought you should be seeing some bigger fish by now.... I would begin removing Bluegill, and up the feed.....

[wade johnson]

Thanks Tony for the nice response and info. I had pretty well reached the same conclusion. Wade

[Walt Foreman]

Tony and Goose are right - you need to thin the bluegill, significantly.  Frenetic feeding is a sign of overpopulation; there are more mouths competing for the food, so they have to hustle to make sure they get some.  In a pond that has a low density of bluegill, which is what you have to have for them to reach their maximum size potential, the bluegill will almost always feed much more languidly.  

You should definitely be seeing bluegill much larger than 9" by now, if you have actual coppernose bluegill.  There's one hatchery in Texas that I have first-hand experience with that I know sells pure-strain coppernose, Overton Fisheries out of Buffalo; I've heard from a coppernose devotee that Tyler Fish Farms has pure-strain CNBG.  There certainly may be other hatcheries near you that have true coppernose, but be aware that there are many hatcheries across the country, particularly in Arkansas, that claim to have coppernose bluegill but are selling either diluted, part-northern bluegill, or in some cases, just regular old northern-strain bluegill, as coppernose.  A little over a month ago I installed an aeration system on a pond, and the owner showed me some bluegill he had caught the day before that he had in a fish basket in the pond.  He told me they were coppernose bluegill, because that's what the fish truck from AR he had bought them from told him - and those fish were no more CNBG than the bluegill swimming in the creek a mile from his house.  

Northern-strain bluegill do at times get as large as the largest CNBG, but on average, according to the studies I've seen and what I've heard from various hatcheries and pond managers and what I've observed myself, they generally grow much slower, and don't get as large.  

Do you have any photos of the bluegill you've caught?  If it turns out you don't have actual CNBG, you might think about harvesting extra heavy on the bluegill in there now followed immediately by stocking some larger-size (Overton's sells them up to 8") CNBG.

What's your water quality like?  Is your pond turbid?  Even if you weren't feeding, in a pond where you live, if the pond were being fertilized and had a good plankton bloom, you should be catching some CNBG 11" or better by now.  Do you have shad or shiners or tilapia in your pond?

Make sure to have a plan for which fish you harvest.  A good approach would be to harvest mostly females (more elongated, lighter, more yellow-green color, no black tipping on the scales, smaller opercular tab) except for the very biggest females which you should release, and any fish  of either sex that appear old (big head compared to the body) or in poor body condition.  Don't keep the largest fish, especially the largest males.  

It sounds like you probably need more bass in the pond.  I would guess you don't catch a lot of bass under 14"?  A pond that's maximized for big bluegill will have dozens of 10-12" largemouth per acre, or even hundreds.  You should be catching as many small bass as you do bluegill, if big bluegill are your goal.  

If you have some cover somewhere in the pond, such as a fallen tree or weedgrowth, stocking 300-500 fingerling largemouth right into that cover would help.  Stocking fingerling bass is likely to work better than larger bass because most hatcheries these days grow out their larger bass on pellets, meaning they'll compete with your bluegill for food, and will also not do a good job of controlling the bluegill, which is the purpose of bass in a bluegill pond.   300-500 may seem like a lot but no more than 10% of those fish are likely to survive in a pond that already has an established fish population.  Overton's does sell larger-size pure Florida largemouth and those might not be feed-trained, so you might ask them about that; you would only need 50-100 bass if they were 6" or better.  You're in luck - you live less than two hours from Overton's, easily one of the best hatcheries in the country.  

One other factor to consider: does the pond have a substantial amount of weedgrowth and/or shallow water?  If so, anything you do to remedy that will make a big difference.  Those conditions allow bluegill to escape bass predation, which then allows them to overpopulate.  When they overpopulate, which is what you have now, growth is cut to a small fraction of what it would be in better conditions.  I have multiple ponds I manage that were stocked with fingerling CNBG a year ago and those fish are already 7-8", and I'm in a colder climate than you are, so your pond has something (or multiple somethings) limiting the growth.

[wade johnson]

Thanks Walt for taking the time to give me a lot of good suggestions. I have gotten all my fish from Todd Overton which includes the Copper Nose, bass, cats, minnows and Tilapia. I had already surmised that I needed to do some BG thinning, but especially appreciate your other ideas and analysis, especially the suggestions of more bass, possible fertilization and dredging some of the shallow areas. I did put in 50 Tiger bass from Ovetons last year and may add some more. Thanks again for your very nice reply. Have a blessed day and good fishing. Wade

[Walt Foreman]

Are the 50 bass you stocked last year the only bass you've stocked, or did you also stock some sooner after you stocked the bluegill?  If you have only stocked 50, that's about 150 short of what you need if big bluegill are your goal, and the bass you have in there presently will have a difficult time spawning successfully with your present conditions because the many bluegill will eat their eggs and fry so that few to none bass survive.  

The reason I asked if you had tilapia or shad or shiners is because all of those species are terrible for a big-bluegill pond.  They not only compete directly with bluegill for food, including the pellets you're feeding which the tilapia love and may be getting most of, but they also take bass predation pressure off your smaller bluegill so the bluegill overpopulate - so the tilapia are part of how you got to where you are now.  Don't stock them again, and if you can get any of them out now by seining or with a cast-net it would help.  

The catfish are not as big of an issue as the tilapia but they're still a big negative because they are vacuums when it comes to the pellet food and if you have more than five or ten in the pond they're getting a lot if not most of the food at feeding time.  Catch out all you can, and never release a catfish as they become very hook-shy and won't bite again and then they're just taking up food resources from your bluegill.   Are they channel cats or blue cats?  Blues are not as bad as channels because they eat more fish, and you probably wouldn't have as many; but channels are awful for a pond you're trying to feed bluegill in.

I'm glad to help!  And the one thing you've got going for you is you have some of the very best CNBG in the country, so once you get conditions in the pond turned around, you should eventually be able to grow some giants.  I'm attaching photos of a couple coppernose from Overton's that were stocked March of 2011 at 6" and were around 10" when we caught them this past April.

[Walt Foreman]

Don't know how the photos got downsized so small but those pics are also in my photos on my page if you look there, at full size so you can get a better idea what the fish looked like.

[wade johnson]

Good Morning Walt, thanks once again for your very helpful suggestions. When I bought the pond five years ago, it was full of bass and channel cats but with very few forage fish. My fishing buddy caught and released 21 bass on one day but reported that they were "skinny". That was the reason for stocking the 300 CNBG along with the Tilapia (about 16) and fathead minnows, no shad or shiners. I put in 25 Northerns the next year along with the 50 Tiger bass last year.

Todd and the Texas A&M fish and wildlife people (Todd is also a Texas A&M grad)are high on Tilapia for bass ponds for supplying minnows and cleaning up the pond. The Tilapia did come up for the pellets and pretty much dominated the feeding. A few Tilapia survived the first winter and I caught one, four pound Tilapia the next year....they are good fighters and great eating. I can see what is feeding because the Aquamax 600 pellets float for a minute or two before sinking so they are pretty much gobbled up on the surface. An occasional cat would also come up and feed on the pellets but haven't seen any cats for quite a while.

We had a hard freeze two winters ago which took out the Tilapia and I caught and ate a lot of the channels because fried catfish is a staple in the Houston area :-)

Again Walt, I appreciate your suggestions which obviously come from a lot of experience. I'm definitely going to add more bass. Oh, I know this is a BG forum but do you have any comments on which bass to stock. I did put in 25 Northern when I first bought the pond along with the 50 Tiger bass that I bought from Todd and put in last year. Todd has quit selling the Tigers because some ivory tower fish geneticist has written a paper speculating that the Tigers MAY revert back or something that I didn't understand after several generations. I'm not so concerned about that....the Tigers were six inches when stocked and have now grown to about 13 inches and are aggressive biters, so I'm happy with them.

Thanks again, have a wonderful day and good fishing. Wade

 

[Walt Foreman]

No problem, Wade, I enjoy helping people grow big bluegill.  Just to clarify, it sounds like big bluegill are your top priority?  If so, you've simply been unfortunate enough to encounter firsthand a very common phenomenon in pond management: someone else (in this case your friend who complained about the skinny bass) was thinking about big bass, and didn't take into consideration your goal of big bluegill, or just didn't know any better, and got you headed in a bad direction for a bluegill pond.

Are all of the tilapia gone from the pond now?  I wondered if you might have a warm enough climate for them to overwinter; if tilapia are still in the pond, you'll never have a shadow of the bluegill fishing you could have without them.  Your best bet if there are any tilapia still in there would be to rotenone the pond and start from scratch.  But if they're gone, you can make it work - it's just going to take some work.  

It doesn't matter what strain bass you stock, because when you get a high enough bass density in the pond for producing trophy bluegill, the bass are going to stunt and stop growing regardless of what their genetics are.  I've just been writing over the past couple days an article for a blog I'll hopefully soon have on the website for my pond business, and the article is about common mistakes people make in growing big bluegill - the number one mistake is worrying about bass size.  Ideal conditions for growing big bass are the worst possible conditions for growing big bluegill.  You want your bass skinny, and you want to see lots of them - when you get to that point you should start seeing some bigger bluegill.  Never keep a bass.  And, don't keep the biggest bluegill, especially the males, because taking out the bigger males allows males with inferior genetics to spread their genes throughout the population.

And, I wouldn't take out too many bluegill of any size until you add more bass, because what typically happens is they pull off a big spawn to fill the sudden void and you've got a bunch of smaller bluegill than you had.  Intermediate bluegill prey heavily on fry and YOY bluegill, so ideally you don't want to remove that predation without replacing it with other predation (the bass).  A good plan would be to stock more bass this fall when it starts cooling off, so the bluegill are less likely to spawn, and then after you've stocked the bass remove a bunch of bluegill 6" and under.  

[wade johnson]

The tilapia are gone.....it does get down to freezing here around Houston and takes out the Tilapia in a winter or two. I'm going to follow your advice and add more bass this Fall and start taking out the small BG in the Spring. Thanks again for the tips and best wishes to you and yours. Wade

[Walt Foreman]

Glad to help!  Keep us posted on your progress with the pond.  Post some photos of the fish when you get a chance.