This is why we get along so well Matt.
Spontaneous Regeneration - appearance of fish in unstocked ponds
Started by
Guest_LittleBuffalo_*
, Mar 09 2012 09:37 AM
68 replies to this topic
#23
Guest_smbass_*
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Posted 15 February 2013 - 09:55 AM
I vote for kids with buckets because I was one of them. I recall sneaking out of my parrents house at 1am with 2 buddies armed with pencils wraped with fishing line and a single hook on each along with hotdogs both for a snack and bait. We then proceeded to ride our bikes about 5 miles to a pond who we had no idea who owned it and fish there for several hours. We caught a bucket full of bullheads (literally there was more fish than water, try carrying that on a bike!) and then transfered them to another pond several miles away from where they came from. This was done all in time to put the bikes away and climb back in the window before my parents woke up and then sleep until 1 or 2pm. Things like this were a common occurance when I was in middle school and couldn't drive yet...
I also witnessed my crazy grandfather throw fish out the window of his car into a pond that had just been completed in someones front yard. We had caught the fish in a lake at a local public park a few miles away.
So yeah I definitely vote for kids with buckets and crazy old retired grandfathers. No one can watch their private pond 24/7.
I also witnessed my crazy grandfather throw fish out the window of his car into a pond that had just been completed in someones front yard. We had caught the fish in a lake at a local public park a few miles away.
So yeah I definitely vote for kids with buckets and crazy old retired grandfathers. No one can watch their private pond 24/7.
#24
Guest_EricaWieser_*
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Posted 15 February 2013 - 11:37 AM
lol, whatI also witnessed my crazy grandfather throw fish out the window of his car into a pond that had just been completed in someones front yard. We had caught the fish in a lake at a local public park a few miles away.
ha ha ha
I have similarly adventurous family
#26
mattknepley
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Posted 15 February 2013 - 06:21 PM
Interesting thread. I think I vote "all the above". I imagine, given location, some events are more likely than others. But I don't think you can rule any of them out. Don't know which is more fun to envision; the grandparent - younger kid tag team, or small sunfish migrating across the fields.
Matt Knepley
"No thanks, a third of a gopher would merely arouse my appetite..."
"No thanks, a third of a gopher would merely arouse my appetite..."
#27
Guest_Baysin_*
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Posted 15 February 2013 - 07:12 PM
I love this topic. Hang around any group of fisheries people long enough and it will eventually come up. I personally have found largemouth bass in ponds that were 10 miles from any road and wondered if someone was really determined enough to carry a bucket of fish all the way back there. I've also seen live amphipods in the feathers of Canada geese that I was helping to band, which makes me think that fry might be transported that way. But clearly there's guerilla stocking going on as well. I also like the observation of green sunfish going upstream in flooded fields, because if a pond has only one species of fish it's bound to be green sunfish. But what I really love is that nobody actually knows for sure what's going on. Biologists all know that ponds get colonized, but nobody really knows how it happens or how often it happens. I just think it's really interesting.
#29
Guest_Auban_*
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Posted 17 February 2013 - 02:44 AM
when i worked for the UF dairy research center, they had some ponds on the farm that some of the students had stocked with various exotic fish. one of the ponds had highfin plecos. after hurricane floyed came through, all of the ponds had plecos in them, even though the water never got deep enough for the fish to swim completely out of the water. i was working during the time the hurricane was battering the coast and would occasionally see them swimming across the ground in a sheet of water. i also saw a cow pick one of them up and toss it over and over again. when i went over and "rescued" it, it was still alive and quite feisty. i imagine the cow could have carried/tossed it some distance. sometimes cows like to play with weird things...
it makes no sense to me why they would have left their homes during a rain, but they certainly did.
it makes no sense to me why they would have left their homes during a rain, but they certainly did.
#30
mattknepley
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Posted 17 February 2013 - 08:05 AM
Thinking specifically of fish in circumstances such as those in Auban's example above... As for rain events, is it possible the changes in barometric pressure taking place would influence fishes to leave their homes? Or perhaps they disliked a change in the water brought on by rain (differences in water chemistry, temperature, substances washed/leached in by the rain)? Is there something about the rain in and of itself that they might like, as opposed to an urge to move from one area to another. (I mean, if cows like playing with plecos, about anything is up for consideration.)
Perhaps we need to get the fishermen and women spitballing more on this. I am an average fisherman at best, but I know that certain changes in weather have big impacts on fishes' likelihood to bite, and seasonal changes influence reproduction. Perhaps there's a connection to our wandering friends. Maybe they're after free-range worms.
Hopefully this isn't all stuff that's been hashed out before. If so, bear with me. I'm not new to fish in and of themselves, but am very new to actively discussing them, and probably therefor a little "ignant" in many areas. And flat out stupid when it comes to genetics!
Perhaps we need to get the fishermen and women spitballing more on this. I am an average fisherman at best, but I know that certain changes in weather have big impacts on fishes' likelihood to bite, and seasonal changes influence reproduction. Perhaps there's a connection to our wandering friends. Maybe they're after free-range worms.
Hopefully this isn't all stuff that's been hashed out before. If so, bear with me. I'm not new to fish in and of themselves, but am very new to actively discussing them, and probably therefor a little "ignant" in many areas. And flat out stupid when it comes to genetics!
Matt Knepley
"No thanks, a third of a gopher would merely arouse my appetite..."
"No thanks, a third of a gopher would merely arouse my appetite..."
#31
Guest_EricaWieser_*
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Posted 17 February 2013 - 09:37 AM
In the flooded plains biotope of the amazon river systems, fish have to know to swim around when the rains come or they don't make it back to the main river. Those fish left in the little ponds during the dry season die when the ponds eventually dry up. There's a really good documentary about it hosted for free on youtube here:it makes no sense to me why they would have left their homes during a rain, but they certainly did.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzzJU810AIk
The part about the drying pools starts 9 minutes and 38 seconds in, @9:38.
Edited by EricaWieser, 17 February 2013 - 09:39 AM.
#32
Guest_don212_*
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Posted 17 February 2013 - 04:13 PM
in ny's adirondacks there are many isolated ponds with large pike, beavers may be responsible, they make small dams that flood the area then after a couple of years they move on, the water recedes and the fish are trapped
#35
Guest_tomterp_*
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Posted 06 March 2014 - 09:07 PM
When I was a teen I stocked both sunfish and goldfish in an abandoned swimming pool. The technique was to crouch outside the fence, then lob them over one at a time a la hand-grenade. I was catching citation sunnies in a couple of years.
The pool concrete was cracked allowing some ground water filling, then some crazy guys moved into the small cabana and when they weren't getting stoned or listening to Buffett they started feeding the fish and tending the water a bit. The goldfish, originally earned through carnival ping pong ball toss competition, grew to quite magnificent stature, with flowing fins and great color variation.
At our local pond, I once stumbed into a dead 3.25 lb. crappie. This in a pond that had no crappie before. (Tucker Road Pond in Oxon Hill, Md.) It didn't take long to figure out where it came from, as my friend Mickey had caught it in Nanjemoy Creek off the Potomac, and decided he'd stock our little local pond. We knew the weight because it was one of the largest crappies weighed in Md that year.
The pool concrete was cracked allowing some ground water filling, then some crazy guys moved into the small cabana and when they weren't getting stoned or listening to Buffett they started feeding the fish and tending the water a bit. The goldfish, originally earned through carnival ping pong ball toss competition, grew to quite magnificent stature, with flowing fins and great color variation.
At our local pond, I once stumbed into a dead 3.25 lb. crappie. This in a pond that had no crappie before. (Tucker Road Pond in Oxon Hill, Md.) It didn't take long to figure out where it came from, as my friend Mickey had caught it in Nanjemoy Creek off the Potomac, and decided he'd stock our little local pond. We knew the weight because it was one of the largest crappies weighed in Md that year.
#40
Guest_tomterp_*
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Posted 08 March 2014 - 11:37 AM
Wow..not trying to be judgmental but we have a lot of youths spreading fishes around. I honestly had no idea it was this common.
LOL, 1973 or so for me, before I was sensitized to potential issues. I had another friend, now a well known fishing guide on the Potomac, who stocked warmouth that he caught in Florida, into Henson Creek (just a couple of miles outside of Washington, DC). I have no idea if they stuck or not but I do know the sunfish I pulled out of there had the most unusual and beautiful edge of fin coloration. They had to be hybrids of some sort. I've always wanted to go back and catch a few to see if they're still there.
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