[Lundy]

Josh visited today and fished my pond with the flyrod. He caught quite a few gills with some pushing a pound when he caught one that was 1.5 lbs on my digital scale.

The feeding program is working well

 

[Ripley]

yowza!! ... i've never seen one that big!!

nice fish!

 

[floater99]

What a slab nice.

 

[HookSet Harvey]

Josh...I thought that was Rick from pawn stars. Lol
J/K

 

[93stratosfishnski]

what did you catch it on?? a 3.25?lol

sooo whats the feeding program?

 

[Big Joshy]

Obviously these are fed pond fish but I had no idea there was one this big in the pond. Small white popper on a fly rod. Fought like crazy and I could not believe my eyes when it came ashore. I was testing to see how big they had grown too so we had a scale and a tape measure ready to go. The fish was only 11.25 inches long. Which is not that long when you consider this fish was around 3.5 inches across the back no lie. Of course pictures never do it justice. Im 6'2 275. It was amazing to hold such a huge specimen. And of course by far the biggest I have ever caught! Released to keep eating and hopefully break the 2 lb mark someday!

 

[Smallmouth Crazy]

Nice fish.

 

[Lundy]

sooo whats the feeding program?

Nothing overly complicated or scientific.

When we remember to do it we throw some fish food to them. Probably 4-5 days a week they get fed to supplement what ever they feed on in the pond naturally.

Fish are pretty simple. If there is adequate food for the population they grow larger.

It was good to see that gill. It has always been my goal to grow some big gills in the pond.

 

[MDBuckeye]

That's awesome guys. I've never seen one that big in person. Sounds like a good program.

 

[Draggin along]

Nice gill! Looks like a Lake Okeechobee gill.

 

[T-180]

Glad to see the feeding program working so well, that's a toad !!! I feed mine once in a while & it's amazing the difference it makes.

 

[TimTaylor75]

WOW! Good looking gill.

 

[Salmonid]

something must be going your way, Ive pellet fed my fish everyday for the last 5 years ( spring through fall) and only had 1 over 10" but I do have a lot of 8-8.75" in the pond Keep up the good work! I think my problem is the channels found a way to spawn and now I got thousands of them in the pond eating everything in site, its killing me....too fast for castnets and cant trotline or jug fish them or even bait fish them because the Hybrid stripers are also meat eaters and always eat the baits before the catfish do.


Salmonid

 

[montagc]

Is that a pure gill or a hybrid? It is huge for sure!

 

[Big Joshy]

I suppose its possible that its some kind of hybrid but it looks like a pure gill to my untrained eye. No hybrids were stocked in the pond to our knowledge. I did put in about 20 gills in the 8-9 inch range that I caught from another pond. I did that about 4-5 years ago, its possible this fish is one of those. There are other gills that we can see when feeding that look like they are also over the 1lb mark.

One important factor I think is we removed tons of channel cats that were feeding so aggressively that they kept the gills on the edge of the feeding zone. Now with just a few cats left the gills can just gorge themselves without fear of bigger fish pushing them around.

 

[tchrist5]

the gill is nice, but that shirt is even better!

 

[stilesp]

This is a few years old but seemed like a good place to post monster gills photos.

 

[Big Joshy]

wow! Do you have the stats on that one?

 

[Bossman302]

some great looking gills lundy! that fish is an absolute bruiser of a gill!

 

[stilesp]

I measured it but I really can't remember. I know it felt like I had a 5lb bass on a ultralight. It came out of my Dad's pond in KY off a snap bean.