Couple of Bluegills from a clients pond

Them be some nice 'gills!!

He's hoping to pull out a 2# 'gill this year. All he needs to do is add a couple more ounces on some of the ones that he has now.

That's what I told him and he said he was telling the boss that I made fun of the colors. I'm in deep doo-doo now!!!!! lol

I had a box ready to ship to him with some Amish Maple syrup in it, and now it will be addressed to the boss instead of him. I know how to get out of trouble!!!!

Come to think of it...I am pretty mad at you too. I will pm you my address.

Wow, those aren't hybrids either, are they?

I'm sending them a container like this:

Is his feeder automatic and if so what is the power source.

Woody, it ain't your grandpas farm pond anymore!!!

Here's some rough stats for you. Ponds can only hold "X" amount of living critters in it. It's called the biochemical demand. Everything in the pond needs O2 to live. Plants, algae, plankton gives off O2 during the day, and uses it at night. The warmer the water, the less O2 it can hold. Fish typically need around 5 ppm or 5 mg/l  or higher to thrive, some can survive in as low as 3 ppm or 3 mg/l. Ponds get the most O2 from the water touching the air. The next most gets put into pond water by phytoplankton, then by plants. A pond does not need to have vascular (rooted) plants in it, but without them something will utilize the nutrients in a pond, and that most likely will be algae.

A pond can safely hold around 300# of fish per surface acre without having O2 depletion issues during most of the year - it will have issues if it gets more than a couple of inches of cloudy ice and more than an inch of snow on it for more than 3-4 weeks.

Feed the fish and you can safely hold around 500-600# of fish per surface acre but you might run into O2 issues during winter or in the heat of summer (especially right before sunrise when O2 levels are typically at the lowest in a pond).

Add a properly designed bottom diffuser aeration system that is run 24/7/365, feed the fish and you can safely hold up to around 1,000# of fish per surface acre all year long.

In ponds that are used for fish production, and where water quality parameters are monitored, they can have in excess of 5,000# of fish per surface acre.....

Rough conversion food rates are as follows:

A fish that is eating other fish will need to eat 10# of fish to put on one pound of weight.

A fish that is eating fish food can gain one pound of weight from two pounds of high quality fish food.

Feeding lower quality fish food, even though it is cheaper per pound will cost you more money in the long run. Fish will not utilize as much of the food, pooping out more waste, which in turn will go to fertilizer to feed the plants and most likely algae in a pond. Algae is a less complex life form than plants, and will out compete plants. That is the floating green mat that you typically see on many ponds. Then you will have to put up with the excess plants/algae, add fish to eat it/them, chemically treat it or do a combination of both. Dye in a pond will help some, but typically not in water less than 4' deep. Dye works by cutting down on the sunlight penetration into the water, and wherever sunlight can get to the pond bottom, plants and algae will grow.