I mostly post in the fly section but thought I would ask y'all this question.
Can sunfish get overpopulated in a tank with Bass and Catfish? This is a good sized tank and these dudes are everywhere. I would not mind keeping some to eat if it helps.

Bluegill/Sunfish can really multiply. Sometimes they spawn three times a year. You would not hurt that tank one bit by taking some gills out of there.





Side Note: To answer your question. YES sunfish can easily over populate a smaller water body.

i would imagine it would be very difficult for them to totally take over with bass and catfish in there
but to be sure you aint gunna make a dent in em by taking some out for sure

Bluegill can actually spawn more than three times a year - in warmer climes such as Texas, there will generally be a portion of the population spawning every full moon from April through August or September. The biggest spawns are in April and May, but they spawn all throughout the summer.

Bluegill can absolutely take over a pond. Once they become overpopulated, it's not uncommon for them to eliminate all bass reproduction over the course of a few years. They eat the eggs of bass on the beds, and what bass fry that manage to hatch get hammered by the hordes of small bluegill. When the larger bass die out, the pond has no more bass. I have come across many ponds that had not been managed in a while, and had no bass left due to bluegill overpopulation.

I have seen a small pond that has been completely taken over by Bluegill. The biggest fish in that pond is a five inch gill.

Sounds like a hand full of flatheads need to be stocked in that pond. lol

interesting that they could take over a pond with big predators in it
bass usually out eat the ability of them to overpopulate

I have a hard time buying the theory that BG could take over a pond with even a decent amount of predator fish.

Green Sunfish on the other hand can hurt the bass fry with their big mouths and also out compete them for food.

There is ample - not a little, but ample - mention of the phenomenon I allude to above, i.e. overcrowded bluegill eliminating bass reproduction over time, in the scientific literature of fisheries science. It's not an unproven theory, but rather something that has been accepted as fact by fisheries biologists for several decades. That said, I have never been one just to parrot what I have read second-hand, without having observed it myself; I prefer to substantiate things myself from my own experience. For instance, there are people in the pond management world who have never stocked northern pike or muskie themselves, yet advise other pond owners against stocking these species. They argue purely on theory, stating that a 36" muskie can eat a 3-lb. largemouth, and of course pond owners who haven't researched the subject think they've been saved from bad advice. This is in spite of the fact that several state DNRs, under the recommendation of their degreed fisheries biologists, have stocked these two species in the past couple decades for the purpose of thinning overcrowded species in a lake (sometimes panfish, sometimes rough fish such as gizzard shad or carp), and invariably the size structure of the largemouth and other predators in the lake improves markedly within a few years of stocking of the esox; there have even been articles written by prominent biologists specifically recommending stocking these species in ponds and lakes with overcrowded bass, for the purpose of thinning the smaller bass. A few years ago I took over a 60-acre lake that, according to the owner, had not produced a largemouth over six pounds, despite having been managed prior to me by a very prominent pond management company who had stocked gizzard shad in the lake, what they claim is the magic bullet for big bass. The owner of that lake wanted bigger bass, but he also wanted bigger bluegill, as his bluegill averaged 5" when I took over the lake (they had been much larger before the gizzard shad were introduced). On my recommendation we stocked 50 12-14" tiger muskie and 1,000 6-8" Tiger bass; a year and a half later we stocked 200 lbs. of flatheads that went between five and ten pounds each at the time of stocking. A year after the flathead stocking, three years after I took over the lake, two anglers in one afternoon and the next morning of fishing caught thirteen largemouth between four and nine pounds, and six of the fish were over seven pounds each. That same year, the owner caught a bluegill over a pound (he never told me the exact weight). If I had gone by the wisdom of people who had never stocked the fish but were operating just on theory, that would still be a mediocre lake.

For me personally, the jury is still out on flatheads when it comes to ponds or lakes where large bluegill are a priority; I might go so far as to say that, for me, the jury is still out on flatheads period; but my two very best bluegill ponds are both an acre or less, and in addition to producing bluegill over 10" every time I take clients to either one, they also generally produce at least one largemouth in the three- to five-pound class, every trip. And both ponds have two tiger muskie in them.

[img:left]bass 8 by tnpondmanager, on Flickr[/img]

[img:left]bass 5 by tnpondmanager, on Flickr[/img]



[img:left]bass 2 by tnpondmanager, on Flickr[/img]

[img:left]bass 4 by tnpondmanager, on Flickr[/img]

Can you stock pike or muskie this far south? If not the flathead, then what is the better alternative for waters that are not conducive for pike or muskie?

What part of Texas are you in? If your water temps in the summer don't get significantly hotter than they do where I am in middle Tennessee, you could stock them. We tend to average in the low to mid-nineties for air temps from mid-June through August, so we have a lot of days where the water temps are in the eighties. I sampled a four-acre pond about a month ago that had a water temp of 88.3 at the surface at 6:00 p.m. The two ponds I reference above that are only an acre each, do both have water in the 12-15' depth range, but neither is aerated so that deeper water is not usable for the fish during the summer months due to stratification.

An alternative would be to stock blue catfish. If big bass are the only goal, and you have Florida or F-1 bass and lots of forage, flatheads could potentially work. You would not want more than two or three per acre though.

Don't know much about fish control or stocking programs but I do know that places where I catch big healthy bass there are also big healthy Bluegill.

I live in Central Texas. Except for this year it is not unusual to have 30-60 consecutive days of over or near 100 degree. I'm not sure how much that affects pond temp, but I know it makes the lake quite warm. What if the goal was to have large crappie in the pond that was between 1 and 1.5 acres?

Most biologists recommend against stocking crappie in lakes less than 100 acres. There is a new, experimental stocking method that has been used by a couple pond management companies to grow large crappie in ponds, but it's only been around for four or five years so the data is not conclusive at this point.