Thread: Stunted bluegills?

Doesn't sound stunted to me either, sounds more like too much predation.

Adolescent bluegills will sex out earlier when there are no big bluegills to compare themselves to. They also pretty much quit growing once they sex out, too. When the bulls are present the adolescents keep growing until they compare to the largest fish and so sex out later; so no matter how you cut it bull gills require enough life expectancy to grow out to the larger sizes. Whether from human harvest or too much natural predation, if they can't live long enough there will never be enough big bluegills to measure against nor the life expectancy necessary to grow that big.

(It can take 8-10 years in the north country to grow a 1 pound bluegill, less of course in milder areas like Nebraska.)

I would say at least the wipers are too much for the 100 acres, if you also want big bluegills. Lots of smaller bluegills would be a very good forage source for healthy wipers though. The wipers being sterile hybrids can be controlled simply by stocking levels. FWIW when predation and harvest are curtailed you will find bluegills moving up in size toward what Lake B shows with a different predation pattern, and that is more likely to be a more natural size structure for bluegills that get enough life expectancy.

Originally Posted by Southern Young Gun

They may not be stunted, just a better pond that has alot of reproducing fish. My fathers pond is the same way, alot of small. But, there ate also alot of mature fish that are not so easy to catch. Try fishing deeper and off the bottom. This is how we do it in my fathers pond and you described your pond almost exactly like his except we have no hybrids or gar. Lake B may have more mature predator fish that are putting a hurting on the bluegill population explaining the low number of fish caught but bigger in quality. The bluegill fry may get sucked up before they can mature explaining the large ones are all you catch. You shlod be able to catch more than 4-5 per hour in any decent pond if you spend time on it and know it. I would prefer to fish in lake A, there has to be mature fish if there are small ones and with all the gar, bass, hybrids, and crappie i don't think you have a overpopulation problem. Just my 2 cent worth, i am not a biologist, i just stayed in a holiday in express recently though, lol.

Never really thought about it like that. There are more predators in Lake A than there are in Lake B. Could explain why the bass limit in Lake A is only 15" bag limit 4 vs the bass limit in Lake B is 21" bag limit 1. Obviously with a healthy stock of panfish in Lake A the bass would be benefiting quite nicely, therefore the smaller size allowance and higher bag limit vs Lake B.

But it doesn't explain the panfish regs, Lake A has no limit to the size of panfish, but a bag limit of 30. While Lake B has no size and no bag limit for panfish (reg was issued 2 years ago, ends later this year).

FYI, Lake A striped bass and wipers reg is 18" and bag limit of 1. But like i said, i have never seen anything over 8", so they may be trying to regrow the numbers and size of the wipers out there.

It seems to me, when the size limit is low or non-existent and the bag limit is high or unlimited. Management is trying to cut down on the species numbers by pretty much declaring open season. But when the size and bag limits are vice versa, it seems they want to allow the species to grow more and bring up their numbers.