" If you want gamefish, bluegills will show up automatically."
How does this happen?
When you have body of water, eggs will stick on to the legs of Ducks, Herons, Geese, Turtles, that were stuck there by them visiting other bodies of water. One Bluegill can lay over 50,000 eggs. With that being told, when we had our pond, the Bluegills were interesting to watch. One area of our pond was what the previous owner describes as a beach area. It wasn't sand, but it was an area of very small stone/gravel. Just about the size of BB's. At mating time, the Bluegills would start swimming around a certain area, and using their tails, mouth, nose, would dish out a bowl shaped area and would lay eggs. At mating time, the Bluegill is VERY territorial. And other Bluegill that came close to that area, **** was on. They constantly stayed at the spot, to keep other Bluegills away.
Bluegills are good eating. And although some may see fish as their pets, you really need to keep the Bluegill population down. We had a 3/4 acre pond, and I had it drained down completely on a number of occasions. When we bought the house, the perimeter of the pond had what I call "junkyard gravel". Basically it was stones that ranged in size from golf ball size to tennis ball size. Weeds were constantly growing and it was a ***** to keep the weeds out. So we drained the pond and removed all of the stone around the perimeter, then built a walkway across the pond using all of the stone, and other clay we had around. The pond was empty for close to a month. Within a months time, we had a bazillion of small Bluegills. Withing a year, we still had a bazillion, except they were much larger. We did have some great Bluegill cookouts.
All of our fish were grain fed. We have a Fish Farm just a couple of miles from our house, so we always bought 50 lb. bags of Floating fish food, which was pellets of food that would float for close to 30 minutes. Also, a couple of guys that I worked with that fished to kill time at various ponds, would release their catch into our pond. So we had Crappies, Channel Cat's, Blue Cats, Yellow Belly Cats, then of course the dreaded Bluegills. We also had White Amur's (Grass Carp) The Amurs are a sterile breed and basically shot blanks
The Bluegills for the most part weighed around (1) pound each with a 10" girth. The Blue Cats, which were here when we bought the house.....They weighed in at 30-40 pounds each. The other Cat's weighed in at a couple of pounds each. Crappies would weigh in close to a pound. The White Amurs....50+ pounds each
I won't even get into the Koi and Goldfish.
All of the regular fish were edible. The White Amurs......Once the pond was down far enough, we waded in, caught them, then transferred them to a farm pond of a friend to keep his weeds under control some. We also had Bull Frogs. A LOT of bull frogs. So many that in the summer, we had to keep the windows of the house shut, just to be able to sleep. They were that noisy. But man, nothing better than some fried up Frog Legs.
The Bull Frogs we had were huge. Take your first three fingers, put them together, and that is about how large the Frog legs were. More meat than bone by far. Almost close to the amount of meat that you would get out of a Chicken Wing.
All in all though, I don't miss the pond. People showing up all of the time to fish. I'd ask how they came to fish in our pond?
You give ONE person permission, then all of a sudden you have a friend of a friend of a friend fishing, that just so happened to hear that we didn't care who fished in it.
Yea.....I don't miss it at all. We will eventually put another pond in. Just large enough to have a few Koi fish, and a waterfalls, so we can sit out, have a small campfire, and listen to the water coming over the waterfall. Maybe 10' x 10' or so
