Disasterous Gar/ Bowfin pond overwintering attempt.

My first attempt at migrating my Gar and Bowfin to my farm pond has ended in as best I can tell 100% disaster!


I placed two male Bowfin both 18"+, one LNG 22"+ and around 14 Florida gar (smallest still > 12") into the farm pond last spring. None of the fish were YOY. Depression is starting to set in, as I have only seen one of the fish (the LNG) dead by the bank with no clear physical damage and extremely little decay. This leads me to believe that the LNG froze!

I have not spotted a single Florida gar and without ever hitting the surface for air, they must all be gone!.

The Bowfins I have not spotted this year either?

All species I saw the entire spring, summer and fall. There are two 18"+ large mouth Bass, an albino channel catfish, a blue channel catfish, two brown bullhead catfish, masses of golden shiner minnows, a dozen small feeder goldfish survivors that are all 14"+ and green sunfish so grossly over-populated that they are now maxing out around 5" in the farm pond.

I was hoping for the "rough fish" to help control the green meanies!

I witnessed all species face to face with the bass throughout the year and saw zero aggression of the bass toward any of the gar or bowfin. The resident snapping turtles had already left the pond for the season last fall when I was still seeing gar and bowfin, so they can be ruled out!

Depression is setting in from a horrific hunch that I have. I am plagued with a mated pair of Blue Heron that have taken up residence in the woods around the pond. They do take a couple of the huge goldfish leaving the giant heads by the ponds edge. I have tried the fishing line perimeter, a fake Heron, and a woof hound none of which bother these monster birds. ($10,000 fine for shooting PER heron in Maryland has removed that option from the table.

Well, it is back to the drawing board. All of my indoor Gars and Bowfins are now moved to larger grow-out tanks. I guess I will shoot for the 24" mark for future additions!

djlamonica said:

Don't shoot them they belong there.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using MonsterAquariaNetwork App

Click to expand...

I fail to agree with you here. This is my private property for cripes sake. If some hobo winds up in my barn, THEY DO NOT BELONG there. They are TRESPASSING!

My Woof (Bichon-Poo) dog belongs on my property. The neighbors pit bull that bit my 5 year old nephew's back side for being afraid and running from it on the loose does not!

You may well be spared the 17 year invasion that we on the east coast are to face in the next few weeks, so be lucky. None of the millions upon millions of citizens that are resident on the east coast will agree with you either when the cicada start devouring their prized fauna! In fact you will get ZERO takers on let the 17 year cicada totally strip your property bare, they belong!

Herons belong in the wild, not on a private property! sorry.

It sucks that the only two invaders I mentioned that you are not allowed to (kill) on my property are the Herons and the Hobos! Well, I need to look at it on the bright side. Given the two creatures that are allowed to "roam" my property without the legal right to kill, I would take the mated pair of Herons over Hobo's or any other "stray" humans ANY DAY!

HungDang said:

I don't think Heron can eat Gars as they can't deal with that bony scales! you said you have a blue cat fish(or it is just a channel cat?), how big is it and it might swallow the smaller gar.

Click to expand...

Both the catfish were channel cats, and both were raised in my deck pond or an indoor grow-out tank along side of the same gars and Bowfins. My farm pond is oval and is 100' across at the narrowest. It is double digit feet deep. I have seen the albino several times after the day that it was released, but I have never seen the blue channel or brown bullheads after the day I released them into the pond. I am not surprised that I don't see the catfish, as I suspect that they remain deep.

I suppose that it is possible that the bowfins are also alive in the pond and staying deep, but gauging from their behavior in my tanks, I would have expected to see them come to the surface but have not so far this year.

A funny side story. The blue channel catfish has only one whisker. Logan (the 22"+ LNG) that was also migrated to the pond bit it off early during grow-out in my deck Gar-den. I did find Logan dead in late March and was with the exception of the mouth ripped off (which I may have done myself with the metal rake clearing leaf debris from the pond edge) had the body undamaged, extremely fat (surprising for March), and very little decomposition had begun.

The body was partially buried in the silt/ leaf debris already, and was not alive when I raked it out.