Well hey, this is Matt Rayl with Private Water Natural Resource Association. We’re going to talk about a fish that if you stock them it make all of your other fish healthier and bigger.
Stay tuned.
What is it you say? Redear Sunfish
You see the title and you see ready or sunfish, so it wasn’t like it was a
They just do not get the credit that they deserve and hopefully after this talk, you earned a little more respect for them to
So they are in the Sunfish family. They look very similar to a bluegill or hybrid bluegill. They have a speckled body. I always say that they look peppered, but twhat makes him the distinguishing and where they get there name is this large red ear flap on the ear
And it gets more pronounced around spawning times. They don’t reproduce, as much as a bluegill, because of that they cant be a cornerstone forage base but we add them as an addition to bluegill.
And they reproduce in the same place of bluegill and often this together, And sometimes they’ll even hybridize
And they need that downward turning mouth to feed on.
A lot of the fish or the, the stuff that they’re trying to eat. They do get a little bit lighter yellow under here on the belly. So they get confused with a little bit of a hybrid bluegill
The mouth and the and red on the ear are great distinguishing features. They just don’t get as beautiful as the Bluegill or hybrid Bluegill
Just silver with a lot of spots.
Now, where they really start to separate from other for some fish is that they eat snails.
And other things with exoskeletons like clams and I often have picked up some of the larger ones up in it feels like marbles in their bellies.
They have this crunchy thing in the back of the throat, call the gular plate.
That allow them to crush hard exoskeleton material.
This kind of gives them a own little niche, so they don’t compete with bluegill. They don’t compete with Bluegill.
And they have find this own little place in the pond or lake. But what I’m seeing though.
Is that with a good populations of Redear the snail population starts to decrease
So it’s in snails are an carrier for the black spot in the yellow grub parasite that get in the fillets of fish.
And it’s been proven 1000 times that reducing snail populations can reduce parasite populations. And a high parasite population can have been proven to reduce overal health of fish
We have worked with a couple of Largemouth bass farms and and we have seen significant percentage increase of growth of Largemouth to production, when Redear are stocked in a polyculture with them
One cant forget either that Redear are the largest of all the sunfish,
So often we states recommend around 100, I should say, of Redear we I have not hit the upper limit yet, But 200 to 300 are starting to be pretty common for me.
Per Acre, that is, well, I hope you enjoyed it.
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