# Stunted Growth



## Shorefishin (Mar 27, 2009)

NE Ohio, I have a 1 acre stocked pond, approx 15' deep, bluegills, Hybrid Gills, Crappie, Channel Cats Bass. The bass over the years have not grown and numbers have not increased though we C/R everything. Most of the gills are large in size 8"-10", The Channel Cats are huge, about 8 of them 15-20lbs, no joke. Should we fish out some of the gills/crappie for better Bass enviroment?


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## [email protected] (Dec 22, 2006)

You have a common problem...too much C/R. Remove all hybrid gills, channel cats, and crappie as these all compete with bass for food and offer little or no forage benefit. Remove as many bass as you can catch between 8" and 15", this will leave more food for the larger ones. Consider a pellet feeding program. Feeding the bluegill will increase forage for the bass. Keep an eye on how the bluegill rebound, supplemental bluegill stocking may be needed. In the future, use a heavy hand harvesting bass and stick to the slot limit.


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## Shorefishin (Mar 27, 2009)

We do use pellet feed on a regular basis. It's amazing to watch. I have no problem pulling the Gills, Some Crappie, but would hate to remove the Cats. They are the prize of the pond. They are the biggest feeders on the pellets.

I got my video to work so check out the scene from the dock.


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## [email protected] (Dec 22, 2006)

Wow, your water is extremely clear. Ohio ponds are usually pretty green (fertile) and even more so when feeding pellets. Why is it so clear? Quarry, well fed, large doses of herbicide, weed infestation? 

Just to be clear, the standard bluegills are good and hybrid bluegill not so much if big bass is the goal. Hybrid gills do not produce a significant amount of offspring and their large mouths allow them to cut in on bass and crappie size forage fish. Hybrid bluegill grow fast initially but in the end, good quality standard bluegill will get just as large, maybe bigger, and produce lots of offspring for forage. I have both too although I've been removing the hybrids. My hybrids were considerably bigger than the standards the first two years. By year 3, my standard bluegill outgrew the hybrids on length and year 4 by weight. 

The cats will eat feed before chasing down fish so if fed several times a day so you could keep them or you'll likely be compromising bass growth.

Your bluegills are getting so large because the few that outgrow the predators have little competition from the young of year spawned. The crappie will crop down the small bluegills before they reach ideal forage size for the bass and the channel cats are probably doing their part too.

In my opinion, there's nothing wrong with a pond that produces trophy size bluegills, big catfish, and lots of aggressive largemouth even if the bass lack size. This scenario makes for a really fun fishing pond. Big bluegill and catfish put up a heck of a fight and are easy to catch. Starving largemouth will compete for a topwater adding quite a bit of excitement too.

A pond being managed for trophy largemouth such as mine may not be as much fun depending on your definition. I may have to fish two hours or more to catch a largemouth and although I've produced several 10" bluegill, they are less common than ponds I've fished with an overpopulation of predators. I have also removed nearly all the channel cats that I initially stocked which has removed the suprise factor of hooking into a 10lb channel cat.


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## Fishman (Apr 5, 2004)

Quite a few ponds in NE Ohio are almost bog like in terms of how they look. I guess the correct term would be tanic. They look like ponds you'de see once you get a little ways in to Michigan. This even goes for the man man ones. Might not be the specific case with this guy, but I wouldn't be surprised at all. I assume most of these ponds have awsome invertebrate populations for panfish in the first few feet of water before they get too deep and the dissolved oxygen levels plummet. Could explain the huge gills (topped off with a pellet program) Obviously the poor plankton bloom is the real core of the problem and I agree damn near 100% with Pondfin on this one. I do disagree to some degree on the hybrid gills, since they will successfully spawn with female gills, but other than that he's dead on in my book 

Unfourtantley for you Shorefin, if it's big largemouth you're looking for, those cats gotta go. You could always invite the family over for a big ol' fish fry and eat those family pets


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## Shorefishin (Mar 27, 2009)

[email protected] said:


> Wow, your water is extremely clear. Ohio ponds are usually pretty green (fertile) and even more so when feeding pellets. Why is it so clear? Quarry, well fed, large doses of herbicide, weed infestation?


This was our original Farm pond. about 15 years ago we sold the farm land. The land was purchased for a residential development and the developer agreed to double the size of the pond and stock it with the purchase. The pond is solely on our land and under our ownership but it does set the setting for the beautiful neighborhood he put in. The pond has been around so long that I cannot say how the water is fed. There is only a small runoff that leads to the waterway will create muddy water when running. The thing we are working on now is that the pond has not been fished and only C/R since its been stocked 15 years ago. Guess we have lots of fun fishing and fish fry's ahead. 

In summer months there is about 10% lillies in the shallows, good weed beds, and 1 side has good # of cattails. We do have 2 carp that have been around since the stock to keep weeds undercontrol


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## [email protected] (Dec 22, 2006)

It sounds like a nice pond. Growing up, I fished a pond every summer near Avon, OH that sounds identical to yours(is the owner Czech by some chance?) My guess is that the weeds are keeping the water clear or it could just be your water chemistry like Fishman said, especially if it trickles through a wooded bog before reaching the pond. I began seeing the negative results of too much C&R in my pond at year 5 so it sounds like you're long overdue for a fish fry. It's probably about time to replace those old grass carp with a couple of young ones too.


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## [email protected] (Dec 22, 2006)

Fishman said:


> Obviously the poor plankton bloom is the real core of the problem and I agree damn near 100% with Pondfin on this one. I do disagree to some degree on the hybrid gills, since they will successfully spawn with female gills, but other than that he's dead on in my book


Hybrid Bluegill will interbreed with standards but their offspring are inferior in both survival and growth than either of their parents. The F2 offspring that do survive gain more negative traits than good ones in my opinion. The following pic is of one produced in my pond. I have caught three of these, all basically the same size. I suspect they were from one of the first spawns in my pond prior to adding bass.









For comparison, here is a standard followed by an F1 hybrid from my pond



















Here's an abstract written in part by Han-Ping Wang (who is currently pioneering all male bluegill production for commercial food production at the OSU Piketon facility and also worked on the yellow perch project that apparently has produced fish that grow 40% faster) In part "revealed that the male bluegills possessed much higher growth capacity than male B × G hybrids," and "Male bluegills' more rapid growth versus male B × G hybrids' apparently involved less growth energy allocation to gonad development. Female bluegills grew slower than male bluegills but also outgrew male and female B × G hybrids " see link 
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118622924/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

I just can't see the need for Hybrid bluegill outside of maybe a hybrid bluegill only pond just to have hybrid bluegill. A pond with male only or female only bluegill would produce larger fish without competition problems. Same sex fish sources may be much more accessible in the near future if Mr. Wang's work is fruitfull. I expect it will be since I believe the same has been done with tilapia, basically manipulating a stud fish so that it only produces male offspring.


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## Shorefishin (Mar 27, 2009)

Fish out the Crappie! That's what you said to do, so here's the results. My cousin and I fished the pond for 2.5hrs. Caught about 50 crappie, really too many to count. Had a great dinner too!


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