Caught a nice bass in my little lake

I have an 11 acre pond/lake on the farm. It makes for an incredibly huge distraction from getting work done around the place.

Got this guy about 3 weeks ago. Would have been a pretty tasty meal, but I put him back in for another day.

Nice Fish! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Bird may come a visiting er Fishing! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

That sounds like a nice sized pond. [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

About 4 years ago I built a small pond using dirt excavated for making a walkout basement to make the dam. I let it age for over a year after it filled up in less than 30 days after finishing the dam. I then stocked it with fathead minnows and 200 4 inch channel cats.

This fall we fished it for the first time and as an overflow event this spring brought perch from the pond upstream we caught several pesky little perch but when we cast out little pieces of artificial worm out in the middle or baited with live grasshoppers and cast out in the deep water where the perch were afraid to go we hooked up with catfish. My BIL and I caught 5, released one, and made 4 into dinner for 4.

Here is one of them showing some growth since planted at 4 inches. I did feed them daily starting a couple months before catching the one in the attached snapshot.

I didn't put a ruler in the picture but to put things in perspective, I just measured my wrist for a watch and it is 8 just a hair under 8 inches in circumference. I estimate the fish to be 16-18 inches long. I tossed him back. His cousins were tasty.

It is fun to watch the feeding frenzy when you toss in a half gallon of floating catfish food pellets. To foil the perch and help keep them stunted to give the catfish a better shot at them I will start feeding floating food that is much larger pieces so the perch can't get it in their mouth. A PhD biologist buddy of mine uses Wally World house brand dog food (large kibble) that floats to feed his channel cats. He says the nutrition is fine and pound for pound is cheaper than 50 lb bags of catfish food.

Pat

Nice catfish Pat! They are a lot of fun to catch. Put up a great fight.

Dry dog food should work fine. Excellent alternative if you can get it cheaper than fish food. Just try to get as close as you can to the same protein content of the commercial fish food. Don't want to go much lower OR higher.

Just curious, when you say perch, do you mean bluegill, green sunfish or yellow perch? Do you have a picture of one that you could post by chance?

How big is your pond? What's the average depth?

KELLENW, I originally stocked with 200 each 4 inch channel cat. I have removed 4 by fishing. I don't know how many survivors there are but there are a lot of them greater than 12 inches in length (typically estimated at 14-18 inches in length.

I am familiar with several fish variously called bream, bluegill, sunfish (red eared and others) and some other of that genre and crappie too. There are also hybrid bluegill, pumpkin seed and who knows what else.

I took a quick Google on Perch and am not sure now if the fish that were washed into my catfish pond during spring and early sumer upstream overflows are in fact yellow perch. The jury is out on that.

So now I have a mystery fish which I'd just as soon not have had in this pond. I wanted all the fathead minnows as food for catfish. Oh well, life is what happens when you are making other plans. With any luck feeding the catfish larger kibble will get the food to the catfish and not into the X-fish. Hopefully this will help stunt the X-fish and make them more accessible to the catfish as prey.

Next year I may sponsor a fishing tournament at this pond were catfish are not allowed to be taken but with prizes for the greatest number of X-fish caught in an hour, during the tournament, by a team, by an individual, etc.

I was told that multi-day interruptions in the daily feedings of large catfish will motivate them to go after available prey with a little greater enthusiasm. Don't know if htis is true or not but may try it next year. Water is too cold now,I think, and I quit feeding when a good quantity of fish food did not attract any observable activity in surface feeding, cats or X.

Average depth.... ???? Hmmm I don't know. The pond is sort of tear drop shaped with the dam at the fat end of the drop but on one side of the fat end not opposite the "tail." The deepest part is in the center of the big part of the drop and is about 15-17 ft. The bottom is rounded like a bowl. The depth trails off as you go out into the tail (turns into seasonal creek and overflow from my pond upstream of this one. I have no cover or "structure" in the deep end. I placed some boulders (used bulldozer and 4 ft bucket trackhoe) into the shallower part to create some cover. One of my winter projects is to cut up some 4 inch and some 6 inch PVC and toss it into the pond to act as "brood boxes" for nesting fish. I might toss in a few cedar trees too.

Pat

Pat, if we have Yellow Perch in Texas or Oklahoma, I never saw any. The first time I saw a Yellow Perch was when I was fishing one day just south of International Falls, MN, in August '92. I didn't even know what they were and had to ask the campground manager. To me, they look more like some kind of bass than a sunfish/bream/bluegill/perch. But they were quite tasty for supper that night. [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Bird, Maybe one day I will get a picture of the X-fish and all you more fish smart folks can tell me what it is. So far I can say for sure it isn't yellow perch or any of the other species I mentioned (I think.)

They are a PITA because they attack your bait or lure when retrieving it though "their" territory (shallow water.)

Pat

Pat:
Chances are using the right sized hook you could catch most of these unwanted fish and transfer them to a desired location! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Egon. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Egon, maybe and maybe not. Do you recall a statement to the effect that if you marched the Chinese army 8 abreast at standard military cadence into the sea and they drowned that you would never run out of Chinese because they could replace that number on a continual basis?

There are several hundred of those beggars. Seining would reduce their numbers more effectively than making a job out of fishing hours a day to clean them out. But miss one pair of breeders and the nightmare begins anew. Rotenone would fix the problem until the next overflow but I don't want to lose the catfish.

A good fix would be to drain the first pond in the sequence and make sure there are no surviving fish, using rotenone or not depending on personal desires. Then when that pond is nearly full of water again, drain the catfish pond till it is low and seine the catfish out and transport to the upper pond. Then remove all other fish from the catfish pond by either rotenone, a fish fry, or putting them in the next pond downstream in the chain of ponds.

Now I could seine in the uppermost pond and put half of the fish back into the original catfish pond leaving me with two ponds having only catfish. Add serious quantities of fathead minnows to both ponds and live happily ever after with two catfish ponds that are immune to overflow transport of undesired species. If the first pond ever overflowed fish to the second pond it just wouldn't matter. I could lose some catfish to the third pond in the chain via overflow but I don't care. I don't really fish all that much and consider the ponds as landscaping and cattle watering supplies. So if things would be unbalanced by my moving the X-fish to the third or fourth ponds in the chain it wouldn't bother me much. There are some big bass in the 4th pond who would probably be pleased to see the X-fish.

Pat

Pat: the square hook cure is not permanent but will reduce the effect of the undesirables and must be carried out on an outgoing basis. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

There are also other trap types avaliable but these may require a little more attention. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Pat - Without a visual confirmation I am pretty confident in guessing that your little invasives are green sunfish. My second guess, but much less likely would be warmouth (yet another kind of small and agressive sunfish).

I attached a pic of a green sunfish. Look familiar?

Green sunfish rarely get very big (though a few lunkers have been caught), have a tendency to overpopulate at an amazingly rapid pace and eat a ton. They have a large mouth for such a small fish, and they can be a real pest when you are trying to target other species while fishing. If there is not a lot of structure and submerged vegetation, they will often control their own numbers due to predation on their own year of young. However, if you've got lots of weedy hideouts, they're more likely to run rampant. They can also be bad news for any other desirable fish as they will eat their year of young as well. 3 or 4 same sex largemouth bass would probably keep them in check and wouldn't spawn themselves, causing another species to establish in your pond, assuming you don't have any in there already.

The larger channel cat will eat some of them, but they'll usually stick to easier meals (pellets) when given the choice.

Bird - While Texas and Oklahoma are not ideal for yellow perch, there are a few people that have successfully stocked them along with smallmouth bass in those states. I've actually been following a discussion on one of my favorite pond sites regarding just this. Like I'm sure you're thinking, I doubt they will be sustainable, but it's an interesting project.

However, I seriously doubt Pat has yellow perch. That was the very reason why I asked my original question about the fish. Just like you, I didn't think it was likely that it was a perch but rather a sunfish of some kind.... considering his location.

You mentioned your run in with a yellow perch was in Minnesota. I used to live in MN, and we had a little lake cottage there for many years. I used to love catching YP. They have a mild flavor and flakey meat. GREAT eating. Of course, they are close relatives to Walleye and Sauger which are highly saught after game fish in upper midwestern states and have the same great eating qualities. Yum!

Kellenw, Thanks for your thoughts. Not sure about the fish as it has been a few months since I saw them and it was just that one day and then just maybe 5-6 examples. Mostly I was just interested in getting them off my hook and not getting another.

I don't have any cover for the deep end of the pond at all. The shallow end has boulders, willows, etc. I want to add some lengths of 6 inch PVC for helping the channel catfish reproduce and some cedar trees and such to provide cover for the hatchings/fry to reduce cannibalism.

I'm all for simple. One of my favorite A. Einstein quotes is, "Everything should be made as simple as possible but no simpler."

Unfortunately, so far, in the time alloted to considering this I haven't come up with a good long term solution short of removing all the fish from the upper pond and stocking it with some of my catfish and removing everything from the catfish pond except the catfish and fathead minnows.

There is more than one way to do this but I'd like to try to do it as easily as possible (did I mention I get lazy?) So far the best plan to come to mind requires a fish pen (holding cell?) probably made from chicken wire. I'd appreciate anyone's comments about making it simpler to end up with the way I want it.

The idea would be to:

1. Partially drain and seine or catch out as many of the channel catfish from the catfish pond as practical and pen them up

2. Drain the uppermost pond into the catfish pond and ensure the uppermost is devoid of fish. Transplant any desirable fish to my other ponds.

2(a) Alternatively, partially drain the upper pond seine it, make disposition of seined fish, and then use rotenone.

3. after upper pond is partially filled or rotenone has biodegraded release 1/2 the penned catfish in upper pond and restock with fathead minnows.

4. partially drain the catfish pond and seine it relocating or other wise making proper disposition of the fish then rotenone the catfish pond.

5. After the rotenone in the catfish pond biodegrades then put the remaining penned catfish into the catfish pond and restock with fathead minnows.

Then the uppermost two ponds on this chain of four ponds would have only channel catfish and fathead minnows and since there are no ponds upstream of them to contaminate them, hopefully it should stay that way.

Thoughts?

Pat

Egon, I don't "get" the square hook thing. Thanks for the trap suggestion but I want to go for a sure thing with total control.

Pat

Fish trap Pat. The netting sized to retain the fish you wish to catch. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Egon, I'm not looking to invent yet another repetitive chore. I doubt that a fish trap will get them all and would just become another maint item to draw on my time. I can think of several ways to harvest numbers of them but no "complete" solutions that are materially different from my proposal regarding draining ponds.

I really do want a pond or two where a baited hook will pretty much only catch a channel cat. I have caught turtles and frogs before but not lately and it is so rare I don't mind too much.

Pat

Pat
You could put in largemouth bass to prey upon your little x-fish, They would beed to be big enough to eat them now though, or else they will probally be stunted for lack of food...
A local bass club may be willing to donate bass for you, iin exchange for a kids fishing day in your pond or something like that...

Cali_Bassman, Thanks for the suggestion.

It was my intent to have a mono culture pond with only channel catfish. I also stocked this pond with fathead minnows which never get large enough to compete with the cats for food but instead eat things the cats don't and then are themselves prey for the catfish.

I have 11 stocked ponds which are multi-use (landscaping views, cattle watering, fishing, migratory waterfowl etc. Most of them have quite a mixture of species including various sunfish, catfish, bass, crappie, and so forth. My ponds luckily are quite productive and most always have a good supply of largemouth bass that are well colored, fat, and feisty. I wanted a catfish only pond.

I built the catfish pond and stocked it and then misfortune "over seeded" it with "weed" fish where a weed is a species in the wrong place.

It would please me if I could find a simpler way to achieve my goal than draining two ponds and moving a lot of fish. This will require lots of struggling through deep mud or the use of rotenone to the get the last of the critters after I have exhausted my ingenuity in gathering up and transplanting fish.

I have helped remove the last of the fish from a drained pond before and it is not fun. We were walking around in several inches to a foot of soft mud atop a thin crust of harder mud that if you break through (and it happens every so often) you are waist deep in mud and may require assistance to extricate yourself. This is NEVER to be attempted alone as you can be trapped and become exhausted and will just have to be stuck in the mud until discovered or missed and looked for.

Thanks again for your suggestion. Ordinarily your suggestion would be a good idea but in my particular case I don't want any competition for the catfish in this pond. So far the only way I see to accomplish this will require having two ponds for catfish. If I weren't adamant that this one particular pond is CATFISH ONLY I could just let the first pond of this "string" be catfish but I want the second one to be catfish only so it looks like barring another plan, I will have to settle for two ponds of catfish only to avoid a repeat of this accidental overseeding/transplanting.

Pat

Pat, in keeping with your goals (maintaining a catfish only pond but keeping it simple), my honest opinion is that you would be best stocking a few larger (16-20 inch) SAME SEX largemouth bass. LMB eat fish up to 1/3 their size. A 15 inch bass is capable of eating a 5 inch x-fish OR channel cat. So, if you stock more cats while the bass are still present, you'll need to use larger stockers.

The bass will prey heavily on your x-fish, and once they have done their job, you'll only have a few bass to remove. Once x-fish numbers become low or non-existent, they will be easy targets via rod and reel, and they'll be BIG.

My concern is that the x-fish, which I am fairly certain are green sunfish, will spawn heavily next year and without a top level predator, they will overpopulate and ruin your pond. They will also compete with your catfish for natural forage as well as pellets. Green sunfish (if that's what you have) have very large mouths in proportion to their bodies. They are very similar to bass in body conformation, just much smaller and much more prolific with regard to spawning. They are aggressive feeders and will outcompete your slower catfish at the dinner table. The catfish will eat a few of them, but mainly they'll stick to the sickly ones and pellets as they prefer an easy meal over a chase. In fact, feeding the cats will almost guarantee a minimal predation by the catfish.

So, gone uncorrected with continued feeding you'll end up with a poor catfish pond, too much biomass (too many fish) for the pond to support, and ultimately, I likely fishkill several years down the road due to all of the forementioned problems PLUS the highly depleted level of disolved oxygen in the water (unless you aerate).

Let the bass fix it for you naturally and efficiently. Trust me, you won't have a problem removing them once they have completed their jobs, and they will be a blast to "remove".

kellenw, Now, you are painting a rather rosy picture that is certainly tempting. The major drawback that I see is the loss of catfish fry and fingerlings from LMB predation as well as probably wiping out my fathead minnow population.

Still, restoring things to my preferred mix AFTER the LMB experiment would be just adding fathead minnows and a batch of small (not sure what size) channel cats. I'll have to get advice on the size/numbers of catfish to stock, if any to optimize the situation.

The down side (collateral damage/side effect) of the LMB experiment would be a starving group of same sex LMB and no little catfish or minnows if I let the experiment run to a natural conclusion, assuming the LMB wouldn't eat much dog food (which is not substantiated yet.) Still it wouldn't be too hard to reintroduce fathead minnows and if recommended by competent authority, some small or mid size cats after fishing out the LMB.

I hope the LMB will not be eating much large kibble floating dog food. I think they are carnivorous not omnivorous (comment?)

Your suggested plan needs to be used in conjunction with some consideration for the pond upstream of the catfish pond. The population of X-fish in that pond is the source of the problem and when that pond overflows we will be back at square one again. The simplest approach may be to drain that pond, provide suitable disposition for all the fish of interest, and then rotenone the reduced volume and restock with only fathead minnows and channel catfish after it has refilled with water.

The drain and or drain and rotenone approach and then restocking with fathead minnows and channel catfish for the upper most pond (immediately above the catfish pond) will help ensure the protection of the catfish pond from recurrence of the current problem. Then I will have two catfish ponds. Not my original plan or desire but acceptable to avoid a repeat of the current problem.

All my other ponds are a dukes mixture of species and seem to do well enough. Some are quite productive of healthy mid size LMB, some fat crappie, and various sunfish and turtles.

Funny thing about turtles. Lots of the folks around here shoot them when able, claiming they will eat all the fish. I leave them alone and there are oodles of turtles and plenty of fish. Funny thing though, the majority of my turtles are redear turtles (they have red blotches where their external ears would be if they had them.) Redear turtles are carnivorous when small (too small to be dangerous to many fish), are omnivorous when midsized (so still are not a big threat to many fish), and then when mature are strict vegetarians and constitute no threat to fish at all.

We have snapping turtles too but rarely see them. There are even alligator snappers but are really rarely encountered (luckily.)

Thanks for the same sex LMB idea. That sounds like a lot less effort on my part. I won't have to transport and pen any catfish. Any fish transported besides the same sex LMB will be from the upper pond to wherever.

One potential destination for a lot of the fish to be removed from the upper pond would be a BIG FISH FRY.

The LMB solution is starting to grow on me! I'll have to have a chat with my hatchery/fish supplier connection, Dunn's Fish Farm, and see what timing they recommend or if they think they have a better way. I can't imagine a better way but I'm no expert which is obvious.

Too bad you are so far away there in NW Missouri, you would most certainly be the honored guest at the fish fry and THE DESIGNATED FISHER OUTER of the LMB after they did their deed.

Pat

Pat
I have a LMB in an aquaium with an Oscar, the bass won't eat the oscar food....

The bass may not eat the oscar food but eventually may eat the oscar for food! [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

Seriously, thanks for confirming the LMB as probably being strictly carnivorous.

My catfish as well as the x-fish have stopped coming to the surface to eat the pelletized floating catfish food, most likely doe to lowered water temps. So... do I wait till they are active again in the spring to take action, or is this cold temperature induced dormancy a good time to drain the upper most pond to eliminate future overflow contamination problems? I sold my nice semi-dry dive suit so I am not interesting in getting into the pond till it warms up. I could drain the pond way down and maybe use my canoe and a dip net to get most of the fish out and then finish draining to wipe out the hard to catch or use rotenone.

Pat

Pat,

That's it, I'm packing right now! hehe

You do bring up some very valid concerns with my approach (it's definately not perfect). First off, LMB relish small cannel catfish. The long slender bodies make for a tasty meal for LMB. Like you mentioned, you will need to stock large CC (if you chose to stock additional fish) while the LMB are present. Otherwise, you'd just be providing some very expensive fish food for them. Larger stockers can get painfully expensive. I've got an idea for this later on in this post though.

Second, your FHM population would indeed be wiped out before the LMB did their jobs with the x-fish. Of course, fatheads are quite cheap to replenish after/if the LMB are removed.

Third, since you mentioned the source of the x-fish contamination comes from a nearby upstream pond, like you implied, the LMB will more than likely never be "done" with their job. I completely missed that this pond was in such close proximity (my fault.... doh! I thought it was from a rare flood event). So, I agree with your idea of draining the upstream pond and ridding yourself of the x-fish source as the only "ultimate" and surefire solution (sounds like work though... I'd rather be fishing... hehe). Now comes my idea for self-stocking extra large CC with minimal cost. Perhaps the current catfish pond could be managed for trophy CC only, and you could use your pond upstream as the rearing pond. Then, you would be perfectly fine using the "Bass Method" to contol the x-fish, and you would have a lunker pond that you could control biomass quite easily in by simply harvesting lunkers as needed (or as hungry) and adding new extra large stockers from your rearing pond as needed. You could grow some MONSTERS with this approach, combined with feeding of course. Plus, you would NOW have the benefit of the LMB keeping the "little guys" from competing with your lunkers. WOW! That would make for a fun pond to fish!

Actually, LMB can be pellet trained quite easily. Indeed, many hatcheries now supply pellet trained LMB stockers (if you ever want to take on a fun project, buy some of them and cage raise them for a year or two and you'll have some amazing fish with unreal weight ratio). I imagine if the bass get hungry enough in your pond, they'll resort to eating pellets as a supplement. They will instinctively go for live forage first though, so you need not worry about them choosing pellet over x-fish. An interesting addition here, in a recent Pond Boss Magazine article (GREAT magazine by the way), they discussed a very interesting death of a LMB. It had the typical huge head and small body conformation you see with forage deprived bass. However, the pond it came from was forage rich, and the other bass in the pond were thriving and had exellent weight ratios. Upon performing a fish "autopsy", it was discovered that PLASTIC BAITS were the culprit. It had so many of them in its stomach that there was almost no room for food! Aparently, this bass had a particular attraction to them. Interestingly, this is becoming a bigger and bigger concern. In fact, while this is the first time I had ever heard of such a thing, upon further research, I discovered that many fisheries management folks believe plastic baits are a potential danger to predator fish populations in impoundments that receive a lot of fishing pressure (lots of people just throw a plastic bait into the water once it's been torn up to a certain point). Strange fact. Anyway, just thought I'd throw that in to the carnivore/omnivore/pellet portion of the discussion.

Turtles... I've never understood why people shoot pond turtles. They are actually a very important part of the pond ecosystem. They generally do far more good than bad in a pond. I've got a lot of red ear sliders and painted turtles in my pond, and I enjoy them. Haven't seen any snappers yet, but I'm quite sure they're in there. As long as they don't bother me, I won't bother them. hehe

Do I smell a fish fry? Yum! :-)