# Golden Shiner Spawn?



## garryc (Jan 21, 2006)

I was at the club today. There was a layer of floating stuff on top of the still water. Mostly made of duckweed and cottonwood seed. Something was causing the water to shimmer. I mean in large areas. The only other time I've seen that at anywhere near that level was when I released golden shiner fry last spring. I walked around the pond, it was everywhere the covering was. I could see fish coming up from underneath and eating it. I ran a repala in the pond and wherever it was the shimmering intensified. I noted that denser patches seemed to be moving as a group.

I taped a minnow net on a stick and got a sample. They look like small fingernail cuttings with a dark dot in the middle. That is just how the golden shiner fry looked.

Question, is it possible that these golden shiners spawned after only one year. If that is the case, then the spawn was massive.


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## [email protected] (Dec 22, 2006)

Shiner larvae look as you describe but it's pretty hard to tell what kind of fish it is at this stage because a lot of fish look the same way. Is there a lot of weeds? What kind? From my understanding, shiners like grassy structure to spawn on and their are commercial spawning mats available to serve as proper substrate. I've been letting a strip of pondweed about 75'x3' grow as I'm considering adding shiners. Do you or club members catch adult shiners on occasion while panfishing? I've heard they can be a nuisance.


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## garryc (Jan 21, 2006)

[email protected] said:


> Shiner larvae look as you describe but it's pretty hard to tell what kind of fish it is at this stage because a lot of fish look the same way. Is there a lot of weeds? What kind? From my understanding, shiners like grassy structure to spawn on and their are commercial spawning mats available to serve as proper substrate. I've been letting a strip of pondweed about 75'x3' grow as I'm considering adding shiners. Do you or club members catch adult shiners on occasion while panfishing? I've heard they can be a nuisance.



No weeds really, but there are both vertical and horizontal Christmas trees in the pond with algae growing from some part of them. I read here that they will spawn over algae. We had a bunch this year and the Christmas trees have a good bit attached to them in the 2 feet below the surface. I never take the algae off them.

http://www.fingerlakesaquaculture.com/GoldenShiner.html 

Still, only one year old and spawning, I wonder if that has anything to do with the mild winter we had. I figure that if that did happen it would be very dependent on the very fertile water.


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## [email protected] (Dec 22, 2006)

I don't think spawning at 1 year of age is unusual, 7 months is possible and like you said it's been warm. Golden shiner spawn is more dependant on photoperiod than other fish (15 or 16 hours) along with temps. After the eggs are laid, they take about a week to hatch and we're just barely in the photoperiod.

I'd say there's a pretty good chance what your seeing is largemouth fry because if the shiners did spawn, the numbers would be very low. Largemouth hatch sooner than shiners usually, even more so during a Spring like this one because photoperiod has less effect on largemouth bass spawning. Although, I've read that shiners will spawn in largemouth nests and the adult bass will guard the fry along with their own young.

It's pretty hard to say if these are shiners or something else...they all look pretty similar at this size and are all eating the same stuff. Based on the above though, I'm leaning toward what your seeing as bass.


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## garryc (Jan 21, 2006)

[email protected] said:


> I don't think spawning at 1 year of age is unusual, 7 months is possible and like you said it's been warm. Golden shiner spawn is more dependant on photoperiod than other fish (15 or 16 hours) along with temps. After the eggs are laid, they take about a week to hatch and we're just barely in the photoperiod.
> 
> I'd say there's a pretty good chance what your seeing is largemouth fry because if the shiners did spawn, the numbers would be very low. Largemouth hatch sooner than shiners usually, even more so during a Spring like this one because photoperiod has less effect on largemouth bass spawning. Although, I've read that shiners will spawn in largemouth nests and the adult bass will guard the fry along with their own young.
> 
> It's pretty hard to say if these are shiners or something else...they all look pretty similar at this size and are all eating the same stuff. Based on the above though, I'm leaning toward what your seeing as bass.


I'm thinking you're right.Last night I walked around with my duty flashlight and I could see out on a shallow flat. Unlike the saucer sized beds made by bluegill, these beds were big like someone dug out a plate size with a shovel. Would you say those are bass beds? 

I saw one bass swim by, that hog was about 20-22 inches long and fat as heck, big for our pond. I'm thinking that my pushing the forage base is paying off big. I never stocked any bass or bluegills, just redears, fatheads and golden shiner. Now that the pond is well aerated the population has exploded. They can use the entire water column all the time. There is cover top to bottom as the trees I put in actually stand on the bottom and stick out a little when the water is low.

The club used to put in bluegills and bass every year, yet no stunting. That leads me to believe that due to several factors the spawning success was very limited. Probably due to the DO level dropping and the fact that the bottom, right up to the bank, was covered in black gunk. Leaves and stuff covered the bottom and got this smelly black oily appearance. Now the bottom is pretty clean and any thing in the pond is not black and oily. Leaves and such that get in the pond decay quickly instead of laying there for a very long time. 

Now I wonder what the bass growth will be when the tilapia get spawning good. I tend to think the bass in the 6-10 inch class will grow at maximum potential.


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## [email protected] (Dec 22, 2006)

No doubt adding aeration will free up nutrients bound up in the muck to be utilized in the food chain and expand it as well. Reducing and abundance of weeds can have immediate positive effects too as the forage species have less places to hide and are more easily caught. These improvements have probably had a greater effect on forage and therefore higher species than the stocking efforts. Improving water quality/habitat often has a much greater effect and higher return on investment, this is why this is always the first step in managing a pond. 

I've never noticed much difference between a bluegill bed and a largemouth bed outside of bluegill generally building communities where largemouth tend to be isolated and often close to cover/structure.

You'll never really know what effect the tilapia have had if you don't have a base line. At the least, you could take weights and lengths and record them over the next several weeks and compare them to a similar timeframe next Spring. But even with Wr data to compare, it will be difficult to say what exactly is influencing changes to the fish with all the other improvements that have been made. The reality is anytime there is a change made, it will have positive as well as negative effects. The best we can hope for is that the changes result in more good than bad. We don't have the luxury of 10 or 15 test ponds to do research and even those that do rarely produce conclusive results, and they are rarely performing their research in test ponds with as much diversity as the average farm pond. This is why I think localized forums where we can compare notes and experiences like this are as valuable or more valuable than the "scientific" papers. I think the most noticeable effect you'll see from the tilapia will be the weed reduction. This should be obvious, noticeable and appreciated by all your club members. Hopefully they will beneficial to the bass too. Having some solid data will help the case to restock or not in the future. The duckweed will return, that stuff is resilient and the seeds remain viable for a long time.


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