Problem: My Pond Full of Monster Bream

[YellowHammer]

At Jake's project, some of you guys heard me talking about how I didn't have any big bass in my pond because as the Pond Consultant guy I called in told me I did everything wrong for a big bas pond and in fact did everything right to have a trophy bream pond, which is cool but wasn't my intention.  The bream are too big and the bass are stunted and starving.

So I'm fishing it out, letting other people fill their coolers, and doing everything I can to thin out the monster Coppernose Florida strain bluegill that eat everything that swims by, but that's pretty slow. 

Has anybody built or used a budget fish shocker?  Do they work enough to bother with?

Anyways, I did a one minute video of me and Chip, my dog fishing the other day.

https://youtube.com/shorts/yyapQhFW1kc?feature=share

[Southside]

You must still have friends with access to things that go BOOM, that will take care of the issue very quickly. 

[barbender]

 You got weird "problems", Milton!😁

 I was hoping I'd get to hear you pronounce, "bream" in your video. I bet it doesn't sound how it is spelled😁

[Resonator]

Ever tried fishing them out with a net? (The rope kind, not to be confused with the Funicello kind).

[Andries]

I thought Yellowhammer would be humming "I bream of Jeannie with the light brown hair" during the video.
No luck.
I've spent weeeks at a time with a back-pack style electro-shocker, but those were only good for stream sampling for minnows.
I like Southside's suggestion. It would diversify your Hobby Hardwood YouTube library. 

[WV Sawmiller]

  I could think of some solutions. All of them involve corn meal, corn oil, hush puppies and cole slaw.

[SawyerTed]

Bread and a cast net?  Just need to line up folks to take them off your hands.  

[Jeff]

I've been avoiding this topic. Wah wah wah wah.  
Robert and I have it figured out, but we need Jake's Helicopter. 

[Old Greenhorn]

When/if you get the bream out what will you do next?

[YellowHammer]

I don't want to totally remove them, but their main purpose is forage for the bass, and I had stocked some "normal" sized bream last year, but I need to get all the big copper nose out, because I think they ate most of the smaller bream I'd stocked.

I tried stocking some 4 lb and bigger Guntersville bass in there a few years ago, and the bass turned paper thin by the end of summer and starved to death.  They starved a pond full of fish too big to eat.    

Bream are pronounced "brihm" in the south, sometimes it loosely sounds like "brim".  I think if I could get Andries to pronounce it, they would sound like "brOm. 

I can't use energetics because it will kill my bass.

I tried the cast net thing a few years ago, before they got out of control, and caught coolers full for people who said they wanted them, but nobody actually would come and get them unless I cleaned them, which wasn't going to happen.  So then I started tossing coolers full over the dam into the grass, and Martha had issues with that.  It's also pretty hard on the lawnmower.

She also had issues with me draining the pond and watching all the fish die and stink.

This year I've been calling folks in to catch them but most people get overwhelmed pretty quick.  The last group caught 53 in short order and the guy complained they spent a couple hours cleaning them, and didn't want to come back.  Can't make anyone happy. 

Since the PrOject, I started tossing the BrOem over the dam again, but Martha busted me a couple days ago when she spotted all the buzzards!  She has a soft heart.  I told her the buzzards have to eat, too.

So I may have to do what I did last year, and just start shooting them with my Armadillo Whacker Ruger 22.  But that caused me to have a turtle explosion, and today while I was fishing and tossing, I realized I should have been whacking turtles instead, they are everywhere.  So now I need to bring both a "turtle whacker" gun and a fishing rod. 

Basically, I want to take out everything that is too big for a bass to eat, say 4 inches, and every bass under 12 inches.  

I called in some "fish people" last year and they wanted $800 to shock the pond, which I decided not to do.

But I figured shocking would be quick and selective if I could get one.

These things are huge, my neighbors pet water buffalo waded in the pond the other day and nothing but bones were left floating in under a minute.  Yep.  Here's one my son in law caught a couple weeks ago, and the start of a cooler full going to his folks.

I went down there this afternoon and realized I hadn't even made a dent in them yet.

 

 

[barbender]

 We just sidestep how to pronounce that word up here. We just call them bluegills, gills, or sunnies. If you asked someone if they wanted some bream, they'd think you were talking about your hat, or the top of your cup😊

[Southside]

Not sure what the hub bub is about anyway, you just want to grow bass.  I mean if we were talking about Brookies I would understand.  

[NewYankeeSawmill]

Get yourself a Northern Pike and throw it in there.... 

[Old Greenhorn]

The NYS DEC used to have a program for clearing and restarting ponds and small lakes that had gotten overrun with a particular species. They would stock it with a hybrid Muskie (or was it pike?) that could not breed but boy could they eat! They would live in the lake/pond until there wasn't enough food to support them and die off. You could tell such lakes because the DEC would post signs all around it telling people about the program and to release any of those large fish they caught.
 They did a lake near me with that method. Now if they could just figure out how to cut the snapping turtle population down because they eat a lot too. I did note that in that pond the small mouth bass did very well after the musky finished up.

[customsawyer]

Dang sounds like we need to have a bream prOject.

[caveman]

I was onboard with a mullet sized mesh castnet or even a fish trap.  I've never used a fish trap for bream, but I don't see why it would not work.  

When we got email on the school computers a little over 20 years ago, we started taking fish orders from the staff.  Fridays (Fry Days) were busy for us.  We kept our ag freezer stocked.  Although we were not supposed to, we would occasionally sell bream (bluegill) at three for a dollar gutted and scaled to our special friends like Eddie the custodian.  

There are segments of the population that eat fish every Friday that would likely take all you could provide.

You are a smart feller so I know you will come up with a solution.

[WV Sawmiller]

Robert,

   Tom may accidentally be close to something with you contacting the State of Ala and getting them to use them for restocking other places. I don't know if they'd come get a few million or not.

    Other options beside the Pike (I'd think Chain Pickerel in your area) might be a few big flathead catfish. I'm surprised you don't have an otter or two coming to help.

    I am also surprised you are overwhelmed with monster bream. The folks I have met who had an out of balance pond usually had undersized bream.

[YellowHammer]

We have Brookies here but they only take bets on ball games and horse races. 

Ain't no muskies here, except the guys living under the bridge, but I don't want them fishing the pond and hanging out here.  They stink. 

I'd have to call Jeremy Wade to get something big enough to eat these pond monsters. 

I'm thinking building a house based fish shocker, and running some permanent wires into the pond bottom.  Then when I wanted to thin the pond, I'd flip a breaker on, and the whole pond would get electrified and shocked and all I had to do was shoot the floaters I wanted to get rid of.  I could use a shotgun to make it faster.  Or if I left the current on long enough, the fish would fry themselves, and all I had to do was scoop up dinner.  What could go wrong with that? 

[Southside]

Well you do have a fancy, new, super accurate, rifle. 

[YellowHammer]

I had thought of using it to whack turtles, the pond is only about 300 yards away from my house, and I should be able to head shoot them from the living room.  That would be cool!

 I should have put that 65 lb catfish I caught last year in there, that would have been cool.

Coppernose are Florida strain bream known for their huge size, and within one year, grow bigger than most normal sized bass can eat, and have a lifespan of up to 7 years, breeding every month and dropping zillions of eggs.

The issue, as my fish guy explained, is that the baby bass, say 8 inches and smaller, can exist on baby bream fry, but bigger bass will starve.  As they told me, it's like putting a bowl of rice at the end of a long driveway and saying you can eat all you want, but only one rice grain at a time, then you have to walk back to the end of the driveway.  The energy required to eat one grain of rice is more than expended getting one, and a person would starve.  So do bass eating the little baby bream.  The optimal size bream for bass food is about 2 to 4 inches long, and as we walked around my pond last year he said he see clouds of baby bream 1 inch and smaller and lots of bream 9 inches and bigger, but there were zero in the 2 to 4 inch range, which is bass food size.  I had never noticed that.  It's been years since I've caught or even seen a 3 inch bream.  So my bass literally starve in a pond full of baby fry and monster bream.  So he said my strategy needs to be to get rid of pretty much any bream bigger than a bass can eat, and most of the small bass under 12" because they also eat the fry before they can get big enough, until I start seeing small to midsized bream swimming around. 

I may try a 4" mesh cast net?

[doc henderson]

smelly fertilizer.

[SawyerTed]

A friend's son is a commercial pond management guy.

He recommends the smith-root company for electro fishing equipment.  Apparently they build shore based systems, boat based and backpack systems.  

[YellowHammer]

I just looked at their stuff, thanks for the link.  I know nothing about these systems.  Do the backpack systems work in a small pond setting where I can walk the bank and shock them up?  How deep do they work to shock fish, 3 feet, 10 feet, however deep the electrodes?  Never considered a backpack one but maybe that's what I need.  Do they work on turtles?  I don't want to rig a boat up, I just want to have something useful and convenient that hopefully won't electrocute me.

[Andries]

This video shows the modern day electroshocks in use.
We used these backpacks to do synoptic surveys for species inventories (fancy words for "what's in the water over here") in the NWT and Nunavut Territory.
Arctic travel, fun work with great people, and it paid my tuition at school - good times five decades ago!

https://www.nps.gov/nps-audiovideo/audiovideo/a0653c96-78e8-4dd0-a245-8df58f3aaf2b720p.mp4 


Back in the day, every farmer out on the Canadian prairies that had a pothole lake would be able to ask the Provincial Fisheries group to stock it with rainbow trout. If I remember right, something like blue-stone or MS 222 was added to the water to clear the pond out first, before stocking the trout. It was a seasonal 'put and take' fishery needing yearly stocking.
Sawyer Ted's buddy's son, as a commercial pond guy in the Tropics where you live, would be able tell you what they use to treat a pond with before stocking. Plus, some tips on what species to stock your pond with.
Like CustomSawyer said; pond prOject!

edit: from Wiki - TMS or MS222 is the only anesthetic licensed in the United States for fin fish that are intended for human consumption. So, if it's good to eat, might pass the Martha Test?

[Jeff]

This is just sitting here... Just sayin...