Looking at buying some land with a pond. Fished it with a couple daughters yesterday. looks like it lacks predator fish as it is filled with small bluegill. Youngest caught two of these though. Real big shiner? Not good on i.d. of fish. Top fished only. Guessing there may be bullheads on the bottom. I think it is a pond that can be stocked.

Looks like some sort of a golden shiner to me. Otherwise just looks like bait.

Looks like a Golden Shiner... Great bait for big channel cats and bass.

Garry-

stock that with some channel cats they will thin out the little gills and shiners and make for some better meat they love bull heads also

We call them hickory shad it’s a shiner

Appears to be a golden shiner. Great demand for big ones like that for bait at 1.00 each and up. If you do buy and wish to trap them they are much easier to catch in traps with 3/4-1 inch slot than with cone funnels. Suspend traps mid depth, baited with oatmeal balls(just overcook the oatmeal and hand form into balls).

golden shiner

golden shiner, they can get somewhat big, up to 10-12"

Great bait for walleye by the way. Not sure how minnow trapping works in MI but if there's a trappable population you could make a few bucks

Fathead minnows and golden shiners, like that one, are typically stocked when starting a new pond, to build up a good forage base for predators. Bluegill are typically stocked a few months later. Bass are typically stocked the next year, midsummer, once the food chain is well established. The pond you are looking at buying, may never have had any apex predators added.

Keith

River/Golden shiner.

They make great trapping bait.

If you are looking for a healthy bass fishing pond,
don't stock bluegills or sunfish as they will over populate
and stunt and be impossible to get rid of.

Those golden shiner along with large mouth bass would
be the perfect combination of balanced predator/prey foodweb.

Seining and selling the golden shiner commercially would be a
great sustainable income stream without them over populating
as spiny dorsal pan fish inevitably always do.

The golden shiners will keep algae/plankton under control
and reduce biological oxygen demand while providing forage
for the bass without problems associated with sunfish/bluegill stocking.

walleyed

I've tried keeping them alive but they seem to die real easy.
Even hooked through just one lip.

And where did you get that info? Down here we make sure the ponds have plenty of sunfish/bluegills for bass. In fact some ponds we don’t even allow keeping them. Not sure where you got that info, but if you want big bass, 8-12 pound bass, then keep a healthy population of bream in your ponds. And keep otters out.

From Fisheries 101 from fishery biology class at college.

Where did you get your fisheries degree from ?

A Cracker Jack box ? LMAO !!!

walleyed

Fresh cut golden shiners, throw netted right out of the river. My #1 channel catfish bait.

Walleyed, got my information from the biologist that manage the ponds down here. Guess they teach things differently in the South.
So how many ponds/lakes do you manage and how many double digit bass do they produce?

New York bass and southern Georgia bass...there is no comparison. Our fish growing season is much longer and better than up north.

Would be like comparing Florida buck deer to Iowa buck deer.....

Swamp Wolf nailed it. Every bass and panfish small pond in the north that I've ever fished in was overpopulated with stunted panfish and the bass were no better for it. I've never fished southern ponds but if some of you are saying stocking panfish as a forage base works out I guess it could be true.

I know it doesn't work in northern ponds.