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Thread: Caught a nice bass in my little lake

  1. #11
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    Re: Caught a nice bass in my little lake


    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]

  2. #12
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    Re: Caught a nice bass in my little lake

    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.

  3. #13
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    Re: Caught a nice bass in my little lake

    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!

  4. #14
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    Re: Caught a nice bass in my little lake

    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
    "I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"

  5. #15
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    Re: Caught a nice bass in my little lake

    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
    "I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"

  6. #16
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    Re: Caught a nice bass in my little lake


    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]

  7. #17
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    Re: Caught a nice bass in my little lake

    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
    "I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"

  8. #18

    Re: Caught a nice bass in my little lake

    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...

  9. #19
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    Re: Caught a nice bass in my little lake

    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
    "I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"

  10. #20
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    Re: Caught a nice bass in my little lake

    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".

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