How do Fish Get There?

I fish a lot of spots that are a bit unusual. Quarries, drainage ponds, any puddle big enough to possibly hold a fish. Some of these places are miles from any other source of water. A pond I fish in Midland is only accessible by 4x4 and it has LMB, Perch, and Gar. This is well over a hundred miles from any lake or river. How do these fish come to be in places like this? It isn't as if someone stocked gar way out there. How do fish travel?

Wading birds. also , everywhere is downstream from somewhere.

MO

Two words: Duck poop.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...-poop-may-transport-fish-eggs-new-waters

About 0.2% of fish eggs pass through a duck's digestive system unharmed.

I never thought about duck poo. Intersting

I hear that a (small) minnow may get in the feathers of birds in one body of water and be carried to another. True or not, I don't know.

It probably happened ..... once

Maybe those underground streams bring them in.

My neighbor across the street has a 25 acre private lake.... How did hydrilla get there? They keep blaming this stuff on boaters bringing it. I know in 2011 the ponds around here dried up and the following spring when they got water in them, there were baitfish!

Someone throws a few in there.

Believe me, if you saw this pond...it's downstream from nothing. This is that part of west Texas where the ground is sand and even mesquite trees and cactus die off.

He speaketh the truth............I used to work in that God forsaken place.

Back in the 70's before grass carp were introduced to Lake Conroe, every farm pond around the lake was loaded with hydrilla.

I've heard that kingfishers (the birds) purposely stock small bodies of water.

Birds wading in water eating small fish, get eggs stuck on their legs, they fly to another pond, the eggs wash off, bingo. I have a stock tank that completely dried up about 10 years ago when we were in a severe drought. It has some big fish in it now. Bass, bluegill and mean mouth.

I hear TPWD can't keep grass in Conroe for anything now. Some said it lowered the quality of the lake.

Raining fish is not unheard of either