How Do Freshwater Fish Get From Lake To Lake?

[chitura]

When I used to bank fish, you would see herons and egrets with weeds and eggs of some kind attached to their legs where they were wading, then fly to another lake.

[Bankbeater]

Gar got into one of the city lakes when the river flooded a few years back.  DNR got them out by shocking the water. Made a bunch of fisherman very happy.

[*Hootie]

I love the bird story.

I've been hearing that bird story for over 50 yrs...lol.

Hootie

[RoLo]

Bucket Brigade

[boostr]

The fish fairy...

[NathanW]

When my dad built our childhood home he also built us a man made pond. The only water it connected to was runoff and stormwater from our driveway. About 23 year later there are largemouth, mudfish, bluegill, yellow perch, goldfish, and some other types of minnows that live in it. The only fish that were ever planted were our goldfish when we got sick of cleaning their tanks. Its pretty wild that nature finds its way.

[bigbill]

We have an old bass hatchery here. It's been shut down for many years.

So bass aren't native here.

Ok now we had a recent complex of buildings build here about ten years ago. My wife went to the gym there about eight years ago. There was a water drainage pond there. She seen movement in the water. The next trip she fed them bread. She told me and I fished there. Plenty of dinks. We fished there a few times every year and seen the bass and sunfish grow. The last trip I was there the bass were 3lbers.

There was always ducks there. I believe the fish eggs are transported by ducks on there legs or they eat fish eggs.

The place had no fish in the beginning.

[Neil McCauley]

 

[lo n slo]

There are ponds upstream of rivers all over the place. Heavy rains will cause small fish to flow over the standpipe/spillway. If you fish behind it, you'll see fish you know aren't supposed to be in a tiny stream. If its a big enough flow, those fish are heading downstream to whatever river or lake is below. Dig a pond and see if crawfish don't appear.

 

Wateree Lake in SC was not stocked with blue catfish or white perch, but they're there in spades. It has become a trophy blue cat fishery. White perch had displaced white bass completely. About 15 years ago they had flood water going over all the dams in the river chain. My dad and I caught more than 60 white perch, white bass and stripers on one trip. I asked the DNR guy what was stocked in Wateree in the last 20 years. Only stripers were.Therefore, white perch were placed there and the white bass we caught that day, and haven't since, came over the dam(s). That's my hypothesis, anyway.

Spotted bass from Lake Norman are showing up in Lake Davidson. The only thing connecting each body of water are two overflow culverts under I-77. There are weeks in April when you can catch as many of them as you want.

[Mainebass1984]

There was always ducks there. I believe the fish eggs are transported by ducks on there legs or they eat fish eggs.

The place had no fish in the beginning.

 

The notion that birds can transport fish eggs is a myth. The eggs would certainly die moments after they leave the water. Ducks do not eat fish eggs either

 

Outside of their natural range a fish species is spread directly or indirectly by man.

 

Fish stocking has been occurring in this country for over 150 years. Many many fish and fish species have been stocked all over this country.

 

Fish have been stocked from the hatchery that I work at since 1891. We still have some of the old stocking slips. Just about every species of game fish you can think about has been stocked at some point.

 

Unfortunately there are far more bucket biologists today that think they know what is best for a body of water that decide it is ok for them to move fish from pond to pond. Bucket biologists are the single biggest threat to introduce invasive species.