How can I ensure that my fish are reproducing?

You’ve stocked your pond and you may be wondering “How can I ensure that my fish are reproducing?” You’re not alone. Here what the fish experts have to say.

Bobbi’s on the line from Minnesota. Hey Bobbi.

Hello! Thank you for a wonderful show!

Absolutely. My sister. Bobbi, what’s your question?

Ok I have a very small pond it measures probably 100 feet long 65 feet wide 17 feet deep. It’s aerated and I don’t have a lot of fish. I don’t have a big load. There’s sunnies and crappies and crappie minnows, but they’re not reproducing. I have the same fish year after year.

See I was, you know my answer.

Without seeing your pond it’s it’s impossible to say for sure. My first guess is that they are reproducing you just don’t see them because they’re eaten very very quickly. However, depending on the structure that sounds like a very small surface area with a very great depth, relatively speaking, and it is possible that you just have very very few spawning sites available spawning sites. In fact, when you’re designing ponds for specific purposes that’s one of the things that a pond manager may very well do is manage in such a way where there is a limited number of spawning sites to prevent excessive bluegill reproduction and so forth. Would you like to add anything on that?

Well you know the first thought I had when she asked that question was that she’s got three predator fish in there. Crappie minnows believe it or not are a predator fish, so are crappies and so are sunnies. Now sunnies typically are pumpkin seeds in that part of the country which is another species of sunfish. All three of those fish eat other fish they’re only they’re limited by the size of their mouth you know a shiner crappie minnow that’s about that long has a mouth about that big, but there’s not any little bitty baby fish to start out any larger than that. So, odds are high that her fish are reproducing, but being eaten very very quickly.

Right, okay.