Fish in my dugout

[mitchell]

I had this dugout dug three years ago and it finally filled up this last spring and noticed these fish in it this summer. I have no idea how they would have gotten there, maybe birds,who knows. Closest water with fish in it is about six miles. I took some pictures of some swimming and also found a dead one. Anyone know what they are? Not very good pictures

[mitchell]

Picture

[DiabeticKripple]

looks like perch

[Rennich98]

Top pictures 100% brook stickleback...don't get much bigger than that

[EZM]

Looks more like a fat head minnow to me.

It's not an uncommon species to be transplanted by birds ...... likely nothing to worry about ...... a good, new and free food source for the trout I would imagine.

http://www.ramp-alberta.org/river/ecology.aspx

[Red Bullets]

Originally Posted by Rennich98

Top pictures 100% brook stickleback...don't get much bigger than that

x2

[tight line]

Looks like a stickleback, looks like his skin is twisted down. Looks like spines on the bottom. Likely transported by birds.

Like EZM said. And yes, rainbows eat them and will get big on them!

[Geezle]

I agree that it looks like a stickleback.

Now I'm waiting for somebody to chip in that birds don't transport fish

[Talking moose]

I doubt birds.... I've seen them in ditches along highways, even mud puddles. Sticklebacks require very little oxygen to survive. Spring run off gets them to some pretty unlikely places.
Could be birds I guess, I just find it odd that pike, perch or walleye never make it to other water body's unless it's from bucket brigade. But stickle backs will be there in a year or two....

[GTZ]

Free food source! You'll have some plump fish in there

[FlyTheory]

Definitely a stickleback, they tend to show up just about everywhere. Some pools in farmer's fields actually get a small population of stickleback if the water sits long enough, and is near a runoff section (obviously, a system that is connected to another population of stickleback).

[BGSH]

They are stickels

[steeleyes]

Stickleback.

I thought fish eggs, etc, get caught it duck feathers and they can be transported that way.

[Sundancefisher]

Originally Posted by EZM

Looks more like a fat head minnow to me.

It's not an uncommon species to be transplanted by birds ...... likely nothing to worry about ...... a good, new and free food source for the trout I would imagine.

http://www.ramp-alberta.org/river/ecology.aspx

It is a brook stickleback. Studied them one year. We sought to prove that they are not transported by birds. We sampled every lake and pond along the Athabasca River. Many ponds and lakes were deep enough to hold fish. Only those with intermittent or regular tributaries to fish bearing water had them.

Transportation by bucket is the cause. Someone brought them in.

There is no scientific proof of brook stickleback eggs surviving a bird flight. Sticleback lay eggs in nests



How did you fill your pond?

[Bushmonkey]

Originally Posted by Talking moose

I doubt birds.... I've seen them in ditches along highways, even mud puddles. Sticklebacks require very little oxygen to survive. Spring run off gets them to some pretty unlikely places.
Could be birds I guess, I just find it odd that pike, perch or walleye never make it to other water body's unless it's from bucket brigade. But stickle backs will be there in a year or two....

They do. Birds will transport any fish egg that spawns in shallow water on their feet.

[mitchell]

Dugout was filled from rain and snow. .No possible way the fish came from high runnoff from a body of water with fish in it, and i havent put any type of fish in there.

[Talking moose]

Originally Posted by Bushmonkey

They do. Birds will transport any fish egg that spawns in shallow water on their feet.

You've shot ducks with fish eggs on their feet? Never mind, silly question. Of course you did. How else would you know that.

[Talking moose]

This is interesting..... Did some research and there have been study's done, some study's had ducks eating vegitation with fish eggs attached and the scientists collected the duck fecces, and some of the eggs were still fertile. They then went on to hatch the eggs, producing healthy non sterile fish!!!! Hmmmmm.

[KegRiver]

I think aliens spread them to mess with our minds.

[Sundancefisher]

Originally Posted by Talking moose

This is interesting..... Did some research and there have been study's done, some study's had ducks eating vegitation with fish eggs attached and the scientists collected the duck fecces, and some of the eggs were still fertile. They then went on to hatch the eggs, producing healthy non sterile fish!!!! Hmmmmm.

Post the link. It will be an interesting read.

Amazing eh. After millions of years of birds flying around... Not all lakes and ponds have fish in them. Yet people are so sure that a man made lake is instantly stocked by birds flying in from miles away.

[Sundancefisher]

Originally Posted by mitchell

Dugout was filled from rain and snow. .No possible way the fish came from high runnoff from a body of water with fish in it, and i havent put any type of fish in there.

Very interesting indeed. You had no runoff...no drainage ditches...no intermittent streams. How about kids with buckets? Very hard for Kids not to grab some fish and bring them home.

[Talking moose]

http://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_...dy_to_an_other

[silverdoctor]

Interesting tho, filled with rainwater, no other water for 6 miles. Fish had to get their somewhere, these aren't snakeheads.

[Chief16]

Originally Posted by Sundancefisher

It is a brook stickleback. Studied them one year. We sought to prove that they are not transported by birds. We sampled every lake and pond along the Athabasca River. Many ponds and lakes were deep enough to hold fish. Only those with intermittent or regular tributaries to fish bearing water had them.

Transportation by bucket is the cause. Someone brought them in.

There is no scientific proof of brook stickleback eggs surviving a bird flight. Sticleback lay eggs in nests



How did you fill your pond?

Are you a biologist? I'm not saying this cynically, genuinely wondering about the nature of your study. Scientific proof is a false statement in itself as science is falsifiable. This means science only offers support. I had a friend with a fish farm that had ponds with stickleback populations and no connection to other water sources. He would should birds and they regurgitated fish, hence introducing the fish to his ponds. This is the only information I have about fish being transported so I obviously am not a credible source. Where you said that you sampled every pond/lake ALONG the athabasca river presents a bias in your study as there was not random sampling done and it was a limited region. By doing one biased sample, I think that you cannot make any conclusions about fish being transported or not by birds.

[EZM]

To me it boils down to the pragmatic approach to developing a sound theory hopefully supported by facts.

It seems less likely to me "ninja bucket brigade kids" would transport a bucket to a farm dugout under the cover of night to transplant minnows 6 miles away. This seems less likely to me as the root cause. It is possible, no doubt, but in many cases not likely.

I remember one such pond, on a very large acreage, again, watershed was well isolated, property fenced, pond in front of house with a couple dogs, that had minnows appear .... I'm certain a bucket brigade would not have been the leading plausible theory in this case.

It also seems that getting live eggs stuck in the feet (or feathers) of ducks, and having the live eggs transplanted, subsequently and successfully hatched to another dugout is going to be a 1 in a million chance, HOWEVER, it is plausible and possible.

Fertilized fish eggs, like those of the stickleback are gummy and gritty and could stick to the feet and or feathers of some waterfowl. They also are able to remain alive outside of the aquatic environment for a short period of time and survive.

If the transplanting, by waterfowl is plausible and possible, albeit extremely rare occurrence, and it seems like the most likely event .... then it's probably the root cause of these minnows showing up in the pond.

The rarity of these "perfect chain of events" re-occuring consistently, and therefore transplanting eggs to every pond, is exactly why we don't find minnows in every pond.

Keep in mind minnow eggs are smaller, typically laid in nests at a shallower part of a lake and make better candidates for transplantation versus a walleye egg as an example.

Transplantation by birds is possible. I'm not sure it's been proven or well documented, but minnows do show up in dugouts all the time ....... who knows. There are some studies that support this theory.

http://link.springer.com/article/10....750-013-1577-7

There is also proof that fertilized can survive for some period outside thier environment ....

http://www.ec.gc.ca/faunescience-wil...n&n=415ACBD8-1

..... ????

[JoeandSally]

This is how the fish got there.

http://mashable.com/2013/07/12/funni...rknado-tweets/

[Kokanee9]

Interesting thread. I hope the answer is uncovered.

[Chief16]

Originally Posted by JoeandSally

This is how the fish got there.

http://mashable.com/2013/07/12/funni...rknado-tweets/

I actually LOLed when I opened that link

[Sundancefisher]

Originally Posted by Talking moose

http://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_...dy_to_an_other

You had me excited that a real paper was published on fish transport by birds in North America.

A 1925 and 1950 paper needing translation and not related to Alberta was disappointing.

So it still stands. No papers showing this has ever been proved in North America.

Please find a good paper.

[Talking moose]

Don't really care. Just thought it was interesting..... You find it.