How exactly do fish manage to appear in literally every body of water?

[Ohioguy25]

I have heard the bird theory, but how does that work? They catch a fish and accidentally drop it in another nearby body of water? I don’t see that happening often. The roe attach to their feet? Still leaves the question of how they get fertilized, unless they already are.  Are other animals like turtles, waterfowl and beavers the couriers of these fertilized eggs? Even then that seems unlikely to populate literally every freshwater stream, pond and ditch on earth. How does it happen?

[Captain Phil]

Good question.  Here in Florida, every body of water bigger than a puddle has fish in it.  In Central Florida, most natural ponds are sink holes connected to subterranean springs.  In South Florida, most of the waterways are man made canals or rock pits.  Some waterway connections are not visible, they have underground culvert pipes.  If they are not connected, people sometimes stock fish in them.   My home in Pembroke Pines had a drainage canal in the back yard that was dug when they built the housing development.  We used to bring bass we caught in Lake Okeechobee to stock the canal.  I put more than one 9 pound plus bass in that canal myself.  Every so often one of the kids in the neighborhood would hook one like that.  You could hear them scream all over the neighborhood.  

 

When I was a kid, I fished a closed end ditch in the Opa-Locka airport.  That ditch was about 15' wide, 300 yards long and no more than 8 feet deep.  It was full of small bass.   How they got in there, I will never know. 

[MGF]

 I have many times seen isolated pools of otherwise dried up creeks with fish in them. I've seen the same creeks completely dry for long periods and then they flood again...and the fish are back. I'm specifically talking about the National Forest of Sothern Indiana.

 

All I can say is that those creeks must have connections to larger water when the water is high and flowing...the fish swim up the creek, it dries up and you again have isolated pools full with fish.

 

I saw isolated pools of dried up creeks that had trout in them when I hunted the Tennessee mountains but I don't know what went on the rest of the year.

[DitchPanda]

Flooding puts fishing all kinds of places...and once a population is established it doesn't take much to flourish especially in places with little predation or fishing pressure

[Team9nine]

3 hours ago, Ohioguy25 said:

I have heard the bird theory, but how does that work? They catch a fish and accidentally drop it in another nearby body of water? I don’t see that happening often. The roe attach to their feet? Still leaves the question of how they get fertilized, unless they already are.  Are other animals like turtles, waterfowl and beavers the couriers of these fertilized eggs? Even then that seems unlikely to populate literally every freshwater stream, pond and ditch on earth. How does it happen?

 

Science has finally figured out at least one way this occurs - bird poop 

 

Fish egg transfer article

[roadwarrior]

[Ohioguy25]

1 hour ago, Team9nine said:

 

Science has finally figured out at least one way this occurs - bird poop 

 

Fish egg transfer article

Fascinating, curious to see the studies using other species 

[Bluebasser86]

[Captain Phil]

10 hours ago, Team9nine said:

 

Science has finally figured out at least one way this occurs - bird poop 

I am intimately familiar with this phenomenon.  It's all over my boat when I go to the marina. ?

[the reel ess]

Several ways. People throw them in. They can flow downstream from one pond/lake to the next when they're overflowing. I was told that someone recently put 250 blue catfish in my favorite fishery. I have no idea why he did that. I hope the bass eat every one.

[WRB]

Fish within their native range have evolved over eons to propagate the species.

Fish outside their native range were transported by man over a few hundred years. 

Tom

[ajschn06]

God

[Michigander]

13 hours ago, Bluebasser86 said:

Beat me to it, lol.

[KYRANGERMAN]

It's Magic!

[Bankc]

Quote

Anaximander of Miletus considered that from warmed up water and earth emerged either fish or entirely fishlike animals. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation

[Hawkeye21]

I think a lot of bodies of water get populated from flooding.  The rest would be transfer from other animals or people.

[Bird]

Friend of mine dug a small pond in his backyard and was his intention to wait a year before stocking it with fingerlings. 

Well, it somehow stocked itself with bluegill. 

 

He still might have to stock it cause the blue Herron are indulging. 

[slonezp]

On 11/23/2020 at 8:21 PM, Ohioguy25 said:

Fascinating, curious to see the studies using other species 

I'll do my own beta testing next spring with deep fried perch roe. 

[Angry John]

Flooding sure seems to spread the biodiversity around.  There is a great example in the lakes on.mt st Helens.  They were literally sterilized and are already teaming with life and fish...

[slonezp]

Nature has a way of figuring things out. When your only purpose in life is to survive and to procreate the species, then that's what you do.

[MassYak85]

In many lakes I'm sure human intervention via stocking or bucket biologists has something to do with it. Many ponds in the Northeast are interconnected via streams so small fry have lots of opportunity to travel while they're small. 

[NYWayfarer]

On 11/23/2020 at 9:21 PM, Ohioguy25 said:

Fascinating, curious to see the studies using other species 

Works with plant life, seeds, as well. 

[ironbjorn]

There isn't a single answer because there are many reasons. From birds, to people, to floods, to other waterways, to things we don't even understand. Put simply, it's nature, and nature has always and will always do its job.

[Luke Barnes]

I witnessed this before. Went to tour a wedding venue when me and the wife were engaged. I saw an extremely small pond by the parking lot and asked if it was stocked. The owner said it was dug out to use the dirt to level the spot the venue was on, so it literally was just a round ditch dug a few feet deep to harvest the dirt out of. When we were there in the wedding day I had time to kill and had a spinning setup with me and decided what the heck. Through a really small crickhopper type lure and wouldnt you know, there was fish in it. Tiny tiny fish but they would nip the lure and i could see them. No streams, creeks, bodies of water within eyesight. How they got there, no clue. 

[ajschn06]

On 11/24/2020 at 11:38 AM, ajschn06 said:

God

It was just a joke settle down @jbrew73