Hello, everyone! I've been deploying a minnow trap off the dock of my pond for the purpose of identifying what species of young of year fish I have. I can catch about 5 of the same species nearly every time I lift the minnow trap out of the water (always the same species as what you see in the attached pics). I don't want to use them for bait because I want them to by eaten by my bass or grow up to make more babies for my bass to eat. I'm pretty sure they are bluegill, but I'm scared they could be crappie. I wish crappie weren't in my pond, but they are. So, please tell me the babies in these pics are bluegill!

Thanks!

 

 

I could be wrong and according to most people I am but I think the top pic is a blue gill and the bottom is a crappie. Just my guess.

 I'm going with juvenile bluegill in both pics. Just not enough distinctive markings like you commonly see with crappie IMO. 

Blue gills.

Bluegill

Piranha

bluegill, even tiny crappie have large mouths for their bodies like the adults do.

no clue...but what's wrong with crappie?

16 minutes ago, Choporoz said:

no clue...but what's wrong with crappie?

I manage my little 4 acre pond for bass. Crappie will crowd a small pond and compete with bass for food. Then, you end up with skinny bass that rarely grow to trophy size. 

 

My pond has nice bass in it. I've caught lots of 4 or 5 pounders and the occasional 6 or 7 pounder, but I don't think it will ever be a great bass pond simply because crappie are present. I try to eliminate as many crappie as possible, but there's no getting rid of them completely without killing everything and starting over. 

Gotcha...didn't realize that you were closely managing a small pond.  I find crappie and bass clearly coexist all over, so I was curious.

Crappie are also notorious nest raiders.  They are not an ideal pond resident if you are geared toward a healthy bass population.

gill

Thanks for the replies, y'all. I'm glad most people think they are bluegill. This has been my first post on this forum. I think I'll stick around!

Definitely two bluegill