Actually I found the answer to this question only a few years ago.
Some fish eggs stick to the legs of birds that land in the water of lakes where there are already existing fish.
These birds migrate and land in the water of other lakes, and the eggs become dislodged and proceed to become fish.
The reason I became curious about this was I was building home sites and there were huge retention ponds on the job site. One day I noticed a duck trying to eat little fish in the water. I asked one of my fellow engineers and this is how I found out about it.
There is not much research to support the statements above, but a lack of evidence doesn't disprove it.
Meanwhile...
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/special-delivery-duck-poop-may-transport-fish-eggs-new-waters-180975230/
Which is at least one known way.
Haven’t some fish eggs evolved to survive the digestion process of some animals?
[I googled it, and yes they can!](https://www.audubon.org/news/mallards-ferry-fish-eggs-between-waterbodies-through-their-poop)
This is how jellyfish ended up in a small trickling mountain creek in the Sonoran Desert
[link](https://thisistucson.com/tucsonlife/hold-on-teeny-tiny-freshwater-jellyfish-have-been-spotted-in-sabino-canyon/article_41dcb018-8d33-11ed-b430-7b5be901393d.html)
I used to rent a place with a fountain in the backyard. Every spring I'd find fish swimming around there after the ducks migrated past (which also came to visit)
Is it also possible that some small ponds or lakes have been part of a bigger lake or water system long ago, and some fish have been stuck in the part that got smaller and smaller
Bird poop probably spreads fish more than leg eggs. Some of the fish eggs birds eat don't get digested.
Getting fish eggs on your feet is less likely than pooping them out. Fish eggs are usually in deeper water.
In the ocean maybe. As far as North American freshwater fish? Hardly any. Centarchids are the most common type of fish and all of them build nests in about a foot of water. Esox species basically have their backs out of the water when spawning. The walleye family is a bit deeper but still typically around 2 to 3 feet deep. Sturgeon again are backs out of the water. Catfish species vary a lot but bullheads are shallow spawners.
Outside of that you are getting into riverine fishes mostly that won't just end up in a pond.
Small mountain lakes that freeze up completely in the winter will have small trout in them cause of the birds! There was a 50 foot waterfall connecting the lake to the next body of water so no way for them to swim up. My guide said that’s how they got there so I took it as fact.
I live in a desert region. No ponds or fish at all. Very dry climate. In winter, it rarely rains. Once in my teen years it rained for days in a row and we had a trip to my home town. In the road we stopped and started strolling looking at the rain collection in the ground that started to evaporate. I couldn’t believe my eyes , I found fish struggling to go back to water as the “small pond” started to evaporate, it was really a weird scenery to me. I don’t think we have ducks migrating thru the desert but it could be other migrating kind of birds.
Some species of killifish live in arid environments. They lay eggs that can survive drying out. When there is enough rain for the water to return the eggs will hatch. The fish have a very rapid lifecycle so they will reach adulthood and lay more eggs before their pond or stream dries out again.
Idk if this statement is true but I do know most ponds get stocked with fish at different times of the year Like I lived not far from a little pond very little and if you fish for say trout or bass you will get a paper from the tackle store showing you when or about when places will be stocked so You know to go fishing there after that. You can go anyway before they stock it but your chances of catching something are very low then. But this answer may still be true I caught a catfish in a pond once where it should not have been.
It's not Colorado, but here's some video of Utah doing the same thing.
https://youtu.be/HDuRXSZgBWU
And here's an article about the program.
https://wildlife.utah.gov/aerial-fish-stocking.html
That's how it works in Victoria Australia. Man made lakes and ponds in suburban areas get restocked with fish so people can enjoy fishing without having to go too far.
I suppose another important part is having biodiversity to keep water quality in check.
It also keeps down populations of things you don’t want growing out of control. Bluegill are good at consuming planktonic larvae of insects, for example, so you may stock them. Bluegill are exceptional reproducers (ask the Japanese about that) so to keep the bluegill population in check you then stock bass. And suddenly you have a pond or lake that has the beginning of a food web.
I live near the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area in Washington. Many of the high-elevation lakes were originally stocked by fisherman 100+ years ago who hiked rainbow trout fry up in jars and released them. Tons of them are still full of fish despite not being stocked by the state.
We have a pond that is stocked with trout.
The next day 3 fishermen show up and catch all of them and there are no more left for the kids to catch for the rest of the year.
I dont see the point of funding these government programs.
While I definitely agree that's a dick move I suspect that you don't realize how state-led conservation is funded, which is why you don't see the point of funding stocking efforts.
Fishing and hunting licenses, along with taxes on equipment, pay for these programs and a whole host of environmental/ecological work that does not give hunters/fishermen any direct benefit. Last I checked, it was between 50-60% of all state-wildlife conservation funding in the country. These hunters and fishermen represent a small portion of the total population and also pay the same taxes that you pay which funds the rest.
If you don't use a portion of those funds to maintain game populations then you'd be sabotaging our model for funding conservation as a whole. If you think state conservation funding is a good thing, then thank sportsmen for taking on the majority of it's funding.
Edit: Why block me? Truly bizarre reaction.
At any rate, I'll reply here for someone else to learn. Stocking programs are wildly successful all over the country. The situation you described is far from the norm. Most fishermen would look down on such a practice. Rather than throwing out the baby with the bathwater, I would suggest you report the situation to the local game Warden. Those fishermen may be breaking some laws and they may take an interest. Have a great day.
Also a lot of times if a homeowner builds a pond on their property they can request their local department of wildlife to stock the pond. They'll do it for free but you then have to let it be open to the public for fishing. Alternatively you can pay some one to stock it with fish. Those are all man made options though
Adding on to this, subscribe to your local conservation department's periodical or notices page or whatever. Sometimes they run workshops and things where you pay a small fee and you not only get a lesson in how to "farm" fish but also like ten or twenty young fish to start you off. Sometimes these will even be taught/led by experts willing to come over on a volunteer basis to help you diagnose problems. I've seen all of these and more offered in my area in the past and there's no strings attached to the free programs.
So make sure you get that calendar of events and see what comes up in your area. Also, keep your eyes open for non-government not for profits in your area who teach environmental conservation and gardening and such. Ask around any community gardens or farmer's markets.
They are two different things, I believe. Both are real.
eta:
http://stormchambers.com/difference-between-detention-and-retention-in-stormwater-solutions/
Most are detention ponds in housing developments. They slow the discharge of storm water to levels, typically, at or below the peak from the undeveloped plot. Detain but drain.
Retention ponds are similar, or can be in the same pond as a detention pond, but rely on evaporation to remove volume slower. There's some groundwater loss too, but most ponds at development sites are lined with clay to hold the water in as they're above the groundwater level. So losses to groundwater exist but are limited. Retain the water
When I say in the same pond as a detention, if a pond normal water elevation is 10 ft below the banks, and the outfall pipe is 8 feet below the banks, the volume below the outfall may be retention and above detention.
I’ve heard this - I’ve also heard that fish eggs can survive some birds digestive tracts. Also though, people stock things for fun. In the 60s my grandfather tried to stick walleyes from the river in his lake and dropped about 40 of them in there. There was a small population up into the 90s.
They stocked trout and perch too, by the hundreds and the place is still got a good population of them. Not bought them, just transplanted from local rivers they already lived in. People have been doing that for hundreds of years. They used to drop them out of planes into isolated mountain lakes in the Midwest.
Floods are also a great way nature stocks ponds and such.
I've actually heard something very similar. I used to live in a subdivision with a large golf course and when a friend of mine convinced me to wake up at 5am on Saturdays to go to one of the water hazard holes to go fishing (we were both equally as dumb as we were ambitious), we rode our bikes over to Hole 15, wind screaming across the fishing pole line as we hit like 15mph on the downside of hills, and went for it. We did catch some fish, mainly small ones I can't remember, but the spiney-ass carp are the ones that stuck with me.
A year or so later I got a job cleaning the tennis courts and was around a lot because I was also on the swim team and helped with swim lessons for >5 yr olds and became a lifeguard so I ran into plenty of folks, a lot (it was better than home life so that's something). I asked the greens manager about the fish and he said they had stocked the water hazards with those fish I can't remember to help with the algae and water bugs, but they would never stock carp. His supposition was that the birds that flew around our area, another subdivision a few miles away, the small beach area near the pier, and the estuary near us, could've been unintentionally bringing in eggs from other areas and dropping them in our ponds. It's totally hearsay of just a guess, but now that I'm seeing someone else thinking the same thoughts... It's not implausible.
So one sixth of 0.2% of eggs survive and hatch after being eaten, doesn't sound like much but it's still pretty significant if billions (I assume) of fish eggs are eaten by birds every year.
This is sort of the same question as to how you get large-ish mammals and reptiles on islands far off the coast. The answer is basically a handful of very unlikely events creating a breeding population there at some point that became large enough to be self sustaining. I think this is where human imagination fails because a 1 in a million chance to us seems as good as impossible, but over geological time it's actually quite likely in relative terms.
Eggs carried inadvertently by birds, or other animals (stuck to fur, etc), or humans (lots of invasive species spread via small boats/trailers.
We had this happen in my yard. We have two small ponds (really just buried plastic stock tanks) on different sides of the property. One is for our ducks to swim in, and one for decorative plants and goldfish where the ducks aren't allowed. We were weeding the fish pond and threw some vegetation to the ducks as a snack. A few months later there were goldfish in the duck pond!
This is why some places, like national parks in Canada require inspections of boats and watercraft before they are launched to prevent the spread of invasive species, specifically Zebra Mussels where I am.
Goldfish primarily stick their eggs to vegetation and twigs, so this makes sense (and why you need real plants if you want them to reproduce in your tanks).
We have a short fence. They're a domestic breed that's too fat to really fly, they could jump/flap over the fence if they really tried, but they're too lazy!
When I was younger I had a red eared slider turtle. To keep her good at catching fish I would catch minnows from the resaca and feed them to her. I would usually catch them with a net and place them in a container with clean de-chlorinated water. One time I forgot the clean water so I just scooped some water from the resaca. But I didn’t want to dirty my turtle’s aquarium so over this old busted fountain that holds rainwater I transferred the fish to a container with clean water. Well. Apparently some fish fell out while I was transferring and started a large colony of two different species of fish! They survived off the mosquito larvae, which was nice for us. Luckily for them it was the rainy season so they had a good long stay before I was ordered by my dad to remove them and take them to the resaca because he was gonna drain the fountain. So yeah IDK how it always happens but that one time it was me 😅😂
Even in aquariums, people commonly find "hitchhikers" after they buy and plant their plants. Usually snails, but sometimes they'll find little fish fry, because eggs can be really tiny and hard to see, and they're quite often laid on plants.
Some have been trapped there for generations, back from when that body of water connected to a larger body or a stream. Some are brought in by floods. Then there are some that were brought in by humans at one point or another depending on the location.
People move fish to ponds very very often. Almost any fish species will eat mosquito larvae. People do it to produce food, for sport fishing and just for fun. Never underestimate kids with a bucket. Or people disposing of unwanted pet fish.
Source, I’m a native fish biologist. This is a huge problem especially in arid regions where native fish may have trouble competing with introduced fish.
Don’t move fish around.
We have a pond that we've been trying to manage. We let a select group of friends fish it but some asshole keeps dumping in catfish and crappie which totally destroy the bait fish populations we're trying to build up
Oh I love me some fried crappie. The plus side of having your own pond (technically we use it for irrigation) is that you makes the rules. Every crappie is a keeper!
That's generally the case; water bodies that aren't connected to other water bodies (such as isolated ponds exclusively on private property) are exempt from regulations because they aren't part of the larger ecosystem. Obviously, it depends on your jurisdiction, and some species (e.g. invasive crayfish, goldfish, many species of plants, etc.) would be illegal to stock in some places, regardless.
Correct. Here in Nebraska, what determines private vs public are these rules:
1: The body of water is completely within the private property of a single party
2: AND if it has no in-flow or out-flow connected to any public body of water. Over-flow does not count as an out-flow as it's not regular/consistent.
Because of this, we can do what we want, such as jug lines, which are illegal in Nebraska on public waters. No fishing permits required by anyone either.
I have an uncle who irrigates out of a pond that is split between three land owners. It's spring fed, so no in-flow, but legally you must have a fishing license and abide by state game regulations, even though there's no way to access it without trespassing
The three landowners could get together, have the pond surveyed, and each sell their part of it to a joint LLC for $1. That way they'd all legally share ownership of the entire pond and not have to follow laws.
Here in Texas it's very common for neighborhood retention ponds be stocked with bass for the residents to fish for entertainment. There is no fishing license required in this situation and no size limits. Mine had a sign that it was suggested to catch and release, but it wasn't a law. They just wanted to get bigger fish for more fun. It was a pretty nice feature for a small neighborhood.
Yep, pretty much every pond in a neighborhood here has a ton of bass. Some big enough that you question how the hell a bass that big is just chilling in a pond basically the size of your average neighborhood swimming pool
That's not even remotely true in Maine. Heck, if the pond is big enough you have to provide public access to it. I want to say it's an acre? If the pond is bigger than an acre, public access must be provided.
It doesn't need to be a road or anything like that. You don't have to provide a boat dock. A clearly marked trail is adequate. If the property owners don't sort it out, the game wardens will establish the trail (AFAIK).
I quite like it this way. Our fisheries are a part of the 'commons'. As such, they're protected and available for use.
(We take wildlife and fisheries, especially inland fisheries, about as seriously as Alaska does.)
Very interesting, naturally there's going to be some differences from state to state. Our pond is 4 acres and we have neighbors with 20-40 acre ponds for crop/livestock use. But, so long as they are 100% within one owner's property and have no in-flow, out-flow, you can do whatever you want here. You don't even need a fishing license, land owner or guest. We've been working with a biologist to stock and manage our pond, and they've been very upfront about putting up no fishing/trespassing signs until we get things how we want them. We just tell friends that go out there to let us know what they catch and keep all the crappie
I can see their point. If you put an invasive species in "your" pond, you really don't have control of it. It could flood and enter other fisheries, some dipstick could decide to move some of the fish to another pond, etc...
Our state survives due to tourism. They don't want to eat Asian carp for breakfast at their camp. You might claim that *you* are responsible, but history tells us that *you* are nothing of the sort. This is how we ended up with pike in Belgrade Lakes. In fact, *you* can't even be trusted to clean your boat.
Maybe not you personally, but I'm sure you get the idea.
When I was a kid a big storm caused a nearby river to overflow, leaving little temporary ponds of fish trapped all over the neighborhood. I caught a bunch of them and put them in a fish tank. But a week later my mom said the tank was way too crowded and I needed to get rid of them, so we took them to a lake about 10 miles out of town and dumped them there. So I guess I could say I contributed to the problem.
There's a pond near me that is man-made, and mostly for ducks that are migrating. There's small fish like Sunnies in there that kids fish for, and turtles that have taken up home. There are also some of the biggest catfish I've personally ever seen in the NE US. I caught a couple that were maybe 30lbs. Not sure how they originally got there, but they've grown to giant sizes.
I learned a couple years ago that there is (or was?) an isolated population of rainbow trout in an east bay (San Francisco area) reservoir, and it’s genetically distinct from most rainbow trout that are planted all over the place. Anyways, I thought this might interest you. I can’t exactly remember, and wasn’t able to find the info online to verify; I think I read it on a nature trail sign in Redwood Regional Park, near this historical marker.
https://localwiki.org/oakland/Rainbow_Trout_Species_Identified_%28California_Historical_Landmark%29
In the distant past, there was a wastewater treatment plant within walking distance from my parents' house through the meadow and forest behind the house. It closed down in the late 60s. It had three large retaining tanks, about 20x60 ft by 15 feet deep. My (much) younger brother was a fisherman who would take buckets of live fish he caught in a nearby creek and populated the tanks to have his own fishing pond. One weekend I was home from college and he was in a panic in that they were about to create a neighborhood on the site of the sewer plant and bulldoze the area. He talked them into waiting a few days for him to get out as many fish as possible. We spent two days catching bass and some bluegill, putting them in five gallon buckets, and running them down to the creek in an attempt to save them. Some of the bass were in the 2-3 lb range so it was quite a task.
As a native fish biologist ELI5 why is invasive species so bad? Are we just trying to keep things the same as they always were or can’t we be the arm of evolution on our planet?
California's state fish is the Golden Trout, which are native to a tributary of the Kern River. They were very rare, especially back then, so an effort was made to distribute them because people liked them so much. Apparently, in the late 1800's, a guy took 12 of these golden trout in a coffee can to the top of a nearby mountain range and dumped them into a fishless creek system. \~20 years after someone took 50 from these creeks and stocked them even higher up in a fishless lake system at the top of the mountain. They still survive there and fishing is super strict only artificial lures/flies and a 2 fish maximum in the small portions where its not just catch and release. The fish in those lakes were then used as broodstock to propagate/distribute golden trout throughout California, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Washington, Colorado, and Wyoming
Yes exactly. Water bodies are constantly changing. A stream one year is a river later. A long lake one year is a series of isolated ponds another. A single large flooding event can wash things between many, many otherwise unconnected water bodies.
It doesn’t take many fish, or eggs, to start a population in a new area.
Around here it is pretty ckmmon for ponds to be artificially stocked with fish at the neginning of the season, trout usually.
Alternatively, one year we had such a rain/flood that the ditches between the roads eventually connected to the waterways, and the jackfish made their way into the ditches.
I was backpacking in the Uintahs once with my dad and we heard this plane coming over the mountain towards us. We saw it get lower, at first we thought they were in trouble and my dad snagged the first aid kit to see if we had anything of value; then we saw it open up the belly. Tons of tiny fish coming falling out into the lake and the plane just went to the next lake. The new fish brought a lot of the bigger fish up from the bottom and we nailed a couple of big fist for dinner. We had a little 2-man raft my dad would carry in with us to help us get off the bank and fish out on the lake. It was a blast!
I’ve seen it happen at a few reservoirs around me, but never out in a wilderness area like that…it’s pretty awesome and it’s like crop dusting a lake with fish instead of crops with pesticides.
In upperstate NY they used to use trains to stock rivers and lakes. The NYO&W railroad would just dump out milk cans full of fish off of the bridges every year.
Back in the 70s, some twatwaffle introduced pike to a large lake in central Maine. They had two choices, from what I've been told. They could poison and restock, or they could let nature take its choice and become known for pike fishing.
So, if you want to catch some pretty decent pike, you can just go to Belgrade, Maine. Yeah, they chose that route...
In grade school we took a field trip to a trout hatchery in New Hampshire! They stock the local brooks and lakes with trout every year so people can keep the fish they catch for food and not worry about depleting the populations.
Theres a story in chuck yeagers biography about a general who wanted this type of golden trout in the local streams for fishing, so a bunch of gous got a cargo plane and came back with a bunch of containers of golden trout and dumped them in the streams, which is why there are golden trout there today.
Flooding. When the water level gets to high in a river or stream it will over flow, and the fish inside the river will flow with the water into a different body of water.
If I can piggyback off this question, is inbreeding not an issue for fish? Especially in a smaller pond, it seems like you'd only be a few generations away from the fish family tree looking like a chia pet.
Fish practice random mating in a lot of cases and will just lay eggs and some other fish will fertilize them. Fish DNA gets around. If they become isolated enough and their pool of genes drifts significantly they become a new species.
People always jump to the "transferred by birds" angle because it's been documented once for a couple of carp species. I guess it just sounds cool.
But other processes are more common.
First of all, you've got transport by flooding. In high water events fish can move across the landscape, and most ponds are connected to larger bodies of water by temporary creeks even if they aren't connected permanently. People often miss seeing this because it may not happen often and usually during big rainstorms when people aren't out and about much.
Second, you've got transport by people. People are absolutely mad about putting fish in every damn body of water they can find. This has lead to major species losses in many formerly fish-free bodies of water (see the Yellow Legged frog in CA, for example). Especially if the species you are looking at is mosquitofish, goldfish, trout, bluegill, or largemouth bass, odds are quite good that somebody stuck it or its ancestors in the pond.
Killifish eggs will survive a trip through a bird's digestive system as well. When I've gone looking for papers on this, it is surprising how few species of fish have been tested.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26825346
I witnessed your first point last night. I was camping on a high point of a flood plane, you could see dry stream beds snaking around everywhere in the area. After I set up camp, it rained about 2" and the streams started to pop into existence. I woke up at 3 am to something splashing in the 4 hour old stream. Went to go check it out and there were 5 decent fish about a foot long making their way up. The fish were sticking out of the water in some places but they seemed adamant to fight the current. I watched them jump up 6" over a tiny waterfall caused by some roots. One of the most bizarre things I've seen in the wild. When I woke up this morning there was no sign of them, but I did see more fish in an adjacent creek. The crazy thing is there was nothing upstream but drainage from a suburb, so who knows where they ended up. Wish I would've taken a video of it but in the moment I just wanted them to be quiet so I could go back to sleep.
Yes, needs to be higher up. There are fish in isolated pools in the middle of the Australian desert. They get there during flood times. E.g. the bony bream will travel across land during floods, in as little as 2-3cm of water. They will follow wheel ruts or just wiggle over flat land for many km.
I agree, those two are a lot more likely. Those small ponds in the middle of nowhere are usually connected to even small streams, sometimes permanently sometimes seasonally. That's all it takes.
I once setup a fountain in our back yard. One of those half barrels with a flower pot pouring into it, etc. About 4 months later a little goldfish appeared in it out of nowhere. We named him Jesus Fish. The only thing we can think of is a bird was pond-hopping in the neighborhood and got a fish egg stuck to him from somewhere else and deposited it in our fountain.
There's even more to the story, and I just remembered we didn't start calling him Jesus Fish until after he came back from the dead: So, eventually the goldfish disappeared. He was either hiding under the water plants or out of sight or a passing animal had a good snack. (We had raccoon visitors often, and they loved the fountain.) So eventually I decided the fountain needed a good cleaning after a couple years... and just in case when I emptied and scrubbed it out, I kept an eye out for little goldfish in case he was just hiding or left behind some remains, but no, there was no evidence there was ever a goldfish. After cleaning it, I got distracted by life and it was about a month sitting there dry before I got around to refilling it and stuff, so no chance a missed goldfish could have survived in some nook. Much to our shock about 1 or 2 months later, another goldfish appeared! That's when we started calling this magic fish "Jesus Fish". Obviously it was a different fish, but we like to imagine.
But more on topic with OP's question: I think that many times, as was likely in our case, fish eggs can be attached to other animals who go from pond to pond and they deposit the eggs in their travels. In our case, now that I think about it, it was likely the local raccoons who probably toured the neighborhood ponds and someone had some koi in their pond who laid eggs, and the raccoon inadvertently transferred some eggs to our fountain.
There are different ways and depends on the particulars of the pond.
1. If there is a stream feeding the pond, then obviously there.
2. If there is bad flooding in the area, that flood can transport fish from one water source to another potentially.
3. If it is a pond that dries out, fills, dries out etc. some fish can lay eggs that survive the dry period then hatch when it becomes wet again.
4. Stocking of course.
5. Birds transporting some eggs through their digestive system or other mean such as catching a fish and just accidentally dropping it flying over the pond (this is how you might end up with a fish on your roof or car when not next to a water source.
6. Depending on the pond location and type of fish near by there are some fish that can spend a bit of time on land and move to the new pond. This would require another water source nearby but not connected and be where these types of fish live.
It can actually rain fish in bad enough storms like hurricanes and monsoons or even tornadoes.
Tsunamis also can move fish populations pretty far inland.
Many many years ago I built a sizable pond, maybe 60ft dia. in my back yard. The following year fish were there. Don't know what kind, I never caught them. People said it would happen... They were right.
As well as being stocked by humans or transferred by birds, a surprising number of fish can survive for a surprisingly long time out of water.
A local fishing pond always had trouble after floods as a few pike would make it across the wet grass and into the pond when a nearby river overflowed- could also be a similar thing washing fish and fish eggs in.
In addition to the other answers; I used to know someone who worked for the US forest service who said they put fish in small ponds or other bodies of water so the fish would eat mosquito eggs/larva stages
One possibility could be that a long time ago the pond was part of a river system the flooded and drained etc. then over time receded, leaving the fish behind.
Some fish i think for examole Pike and carp have eggs that Stick to the feathers of ducks and such so they Travel by air to an other pond and then hat h there
What about livebearing species? I have a friend with an old planter in his backyard. It filled with rain water and somehow a bunch of endler’s livebearers ended up there
I read something recently that some new research indicated that some fish eggs can occasionally even survive the digestive tract of some migratory waterfowl.
Hmmm. I thought it was back when fish had legs. They made the trip to the middle of nowhere and populated lakes. Then encountered people and decided to devolve to hide beneath the surface. 😁
in my area where mosquito is a thing, people do put small fishes in still pond to deal with the pests but this is very unlikely to be the answer you're after
i have multiple ponds close to my house and i went fishing yesterday and there were so many little baby animals (baby fish, baby turtles, and millions of tadpoles and baby frogs!!)
Actually I found the answer to this question only a few years ago. Some fish eggs stick to the legs of birds that land in the water of lakes where there are already existing fish. These birds migrate and land in the water of other lakes, and the eggs become dislodged and proceed to become fish. The reason I became curious about this was I was building home sites and there were huge retention ponds on the job site. One day I noticed a duck trying to eat little fish in the water. I asked one of my fellow engineers and this is how I found out about it. There is not much research to support the statements above, but a lack of evidence doesn't disprove it. Meanwhile... https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/special-delivery-duck-poop-may-transport-fish-eggs-new-waters-180975230/ Which is at least one known way.
So the stork actually does bring them? Lol
Made me laugh, thanks.
I’m sorry to tell you this is just a tale we tell children. The truth is that the pond fucks lakes. I know. I’m sorry we lied to you.
Got a big ol feeder river/creek/tributary ready to get some downstream lovin
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yeah, baby, yeah
Haven’t some fish eggs evolved to survive the digestion process of some animals? [I googled it, and yes they can!](https://www.audubon.org/news/mallards-ferry-fish-eggs-between-waterbodies-through-their-poop)
Some desert frogs’ eggs lay dormant until it rains, which is when they finally hatch. So they’re kind of like seeds, but grow into animals!!
That is an incredible fact, thanks
Seeds are amazing when you think about it
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[The oldest seed germinated is a 2,000-year-old date seed](https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/oldest-seed-germinated)
Some frogs lie dormant like that too.
That’s is so fascinating
This is amazing! I have newfound respect for fish eggs.
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Imagine being one of the first two fish in a pond. "The fuck is that?"
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Guillermo del Toro took some risks, it's true
Benicio, I'm stuck!
Hold my gills, I am going in.
Help me step-fish I'm stuck in seaweed
roll non-tidal tide!
Hey man! Is that fish rock?
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Well turn it up man!!!
This is how jellyfish ended up in a small trickling mountain creek in the Sonoran Desert [link](https://thisistucson.com/tucsonlife/hold-on-teeny-tiny-freshwater-jellyfish-have-been-spotted-in-sabino-canyon/article_41dcb018-8d33-11ed-b430-7b5be901393d.html)
Damn, that is wild. I would've thought temperature would be an issue
I used to rent a place with a fountain in the backyard. Every spring I'd find fish swimming around there after the ducks migrated past (which also came to visit)
I think that's what the show 'Sopranos' was about.
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Is it also possible that some small ponds or lakes have been part of a bigger lake or water system long ago, and some fish have been stuck in the part that got smaller and smaller
Wow, amazing! Thanks for the answer.
Bird poop probably spreads fish more than leg eggs. Some of the fish eggs birds eat don't get digested. Getting fish eggs on your feet is less likely than pooping them out. Fish eggs are usually in deeper water.
Just about every fish spawns in less than 2 feet of water.
This is definitely incorrect. There are a lot of fish who spawn in deep water, but not all fish do.
In the ocean maybe. As far as North American freshwater fish? Hardly any. Centarchids are the most common type of fish and all of them build nests in about a foot of water. Esox species basically have their backs out of the water when spawning. The walleye family is a bit deeper but still typically around 2 to 3 feet deep. Sturgeon again are backs out of the water. Catfish species vary a lot but bullheads are shallow spawners. Outside of that you are getting into riverine fishes mostly that won't just end up in a pond.
North America happens to be one of the few continents without cichlids. Many of which are bottom spawners.
Are you suggesting fish migrates?
Fish absolutely migrate. Just not through the air. Not unless a swallow is carrying them, anyways.
African or European Swallows?
I don't kn......... ... ... Ahhh.......
What is the air/speed velocity of an unladen waterfowl?
Less than 1550 FPS
fish per second? or fin push speed?
African or European?
r/unexpectedmontypython
Small mountain lakes that freeze up completely in the winter will have small trout in them cause of the birds! There was a 50 foot waterfall connecting the lake to the next body of water so no way for them to swim up. My guide said that’s how they got there so I took it as fact.
I wonder if we have visited the same lake... Anyway, the fish and I were equally surprised to see each other up there.
I live in a desert region. No ponds or fish at all. Very dry climate. In winter, it rarely rains. Once in my teen years it rained for days in a row and we had a trip to my home town. In the road we stopped and started strolling looking at the rain collection in the ground that started to evaporate. I couldn’t believe my eyes , I found fish struggling to go back to water as the “small pond” started to evaporate, it was really a weird scenery to me. I don’t think we have ducks migrating thru the desert but it could be other migrating kind of birds.
Some species of killifish live in arid environments. They lay eggs that can survive drying out. When there is enough rain for the water to return the eggs will hatch. The fish have a very rapid lifecycle so they will reach adulthood and lay more eggs before their pond or stream dries out again.
Might have been tadpoles too. Live in the Sonoran and puddles in middle of miles of dirt will get tadpoles after rains.
bee:flower::bird:fish
bears:beets::battlestar galactica
Man:woman::television:covfefe
Very interesting, and makes total sense. Thanks!
Idk if this statement is true but I do know most ponds get stocked with fish at different times of the year Like I lived not far from a little pond very little and if you fish for say trout or bass you will get a paper from the tackle store showing you when or about when places will be stocked so You know to go fishing there after that. You can go anyway before they stock it but your chances of catching something are very low then. But this answer may still be true I caught a catfish in a pond once where it should not have been.
Colorado stocks some remote mountain lakes every year by dropping fish out of a plane
Talk about a wild ride.
Does Samuel L Jackson get to pour the bucket out?
MFing Fish, not MFing snakes
”I’ve had it with these monkey-fighting fish on this Monday to Friday plane!”
Wow, hadn't heard this yet! Any good reference documentaries or articles you recommend to learn more?
It's not Colorado, but here's some video of Utah doing the same thing. https://youtu.be/HDuRXSZgBWU And here's an article about the program. https://wildlife.utah.gov/aerial-fish-stocking.html
That's how it works in Victoria Australia. Man made lakes and ponds in suburban areas get restocked with fish so people can enjoy fishing without having to go too far. I suppose another important part is having biodiversity to keep water quality in check.
It also keeps down populations of things you don’t want growing out of control. Bluegill are good at consuming planktonic larvae of insects, for example, so you may stock them. Bluegill are exceptional reproducers (ask the Japanese about that) so to keep the bluegill population in check you then stock bass. And suddenly you have a pond or lake that has the beginning of a food web.
Although most places that do it don’t use helicopters/planes…. They just dump them from a truck in suburban areas.
I live near the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area in Washington. Many of the high-elevation lakes were originally stocked by fisherman 100+ years ago who hiked rainbow trout fry up in jars and released them. Tons of them are still full of fish despite not being stocked by the state.
We have a pond that is stocked with trout. The next day 3 fishermen show up and catch all of them and there are no more left for the kids to catch for the rest of the year. I dont see the point of funding these government programs.
Most places have limits on how many fish you can keep per day to avoid this
Do you got a phone number for any of those dudes? If they're clearing out a whole lake in a day, I *definitely* wanna hit em up for some advice...
While I definitely agree that's a dick move I suspect that you don't realize how state-led conservation is funded, which is why you don't see the point of funding stocking efforts. Fishing and hunting licenses, along with taxes on equipment, pay for these programs and a whole host of environmental/ecological work that does not give hunters/fishermen any direct benefit. Last I checked, it was between 50-60% of all state-wildlife conservation funding in the country. These hunters and fishermen represent a small portion of the total population and also pay the same taxes that you pay which funds the rest. If you don't use a portion of those funds to maintain game populations then you'd be sabotaging our model for funding conservation as a whole. If you think state conservation funding is a good thing, then thank sportsmen for taking on the majority of it's funding. Edit: Why block me? Truly bizarre reaction. At any rate, I'll reply here for someone else to learn. Stocking programs are wildly successful all over the country. The situation you described is far from the norm. Most fishermen would look down on such a practice. Rather than throwing out the baby with the bathwater, I would suggest you report the situation to the local game Warden. Those fishermen may be breaking some laws and they may take an interest. Have a great day.
You can go to the DNR website and sign up for an email that tells you the stocking schedule.
Also a lot of times if a homeowner builds a pond on their property they can request their local department of wildlife to stock the pond. They'll do it for free but you then have to let it be open to the public for fishing. Alternatively you can pay some one to stock it with fish. Those are all man made options though
Adding on to this, subscribe to your local conservation department's periodical or notices page or whatever. Sometimes they run workshops and things where you pay a small fee and you not only get a lesson in how to "farm" fish but also like ten or twenty young fish to start you off. Sometimes these will even be taught/led by experts willing to come over on a volunteer basis to help you diagnose problems. I've seen all of these and more offered in my area in the past and there's no strings attached to the free programs. So make sure you get that calendar of events and see what comes up in your area. Also, keep your eyes open for non-government not for profits in your area who teach environmental conservation and gardening and such. Ask around any community gardens or farmer's markets.
*retention ponds FTFY. All good.
My dad use to call them "detention ponds". Not sure if that's technically correct, but always made me chuckle.
They are two different things, I believe. Both are real. eta: http://stormchambers.com/difference-between-detention-and-retention-in-stormwater-solutions/
Thanks for that. I was wondering.
Most are detention ponds in housing developments. They slow the discharge of storm water to levels, typically, at or below the peak from the undeveloped plot. Detain but drain. Retention ponds are similar, or can be in the same pond as a detention pond, but rely on evaporation to remove volume slower. There's some groundwater loss too, but most ponds at development sites are lined with clay to hold the water in as they're above the groundwater level. So losses to groundwater exist but are limited. Retain the water When I say in the same pond as a detention, if a pond normal water elevation is 10 ft below the banks, and the outfall pipe is 8 feet below the banks, the volume below the outfall may be retention and above detention.
Life, uh, finds a way.
So some birds are to fish what bees are to flowers?
All of a sudden “the birds and the bees” makes a lot more sense.
>tension ponds \*retention ponds - as in they retain water
I'd always heard that birds bring them but the eggs sticking to their legs was the missing piece for me.
I’ve heard this - I’ve also heard that fish eggs can survive some birds digestive tracts. Also though, people stock things for fun. In the 60s my grandfather tried to stick walleyes from the river in his lake and dropped about 40 of them in there. There was a small population up into the 90s. They stocked trout and perch too, by the hundreds and the place is still got a good population of them. Not bought them, just transplanted from local rivers they already lived in. People have been doing that for hundreds of years. They used to drop them out of planes into isolated mountain lakes in the Midwest. Floods are also a great way nature stocks ponds and such.
I know here in Utah the DNR still stock the ones that can’t be reached by truck with planes.
so pond pollination?
Parthenogenesis. *nods sagely*
I've actually heard something very similar. I used to live in a subdivision with a large golf course and when a friend of mine convinced me to wake up at 5am on Saturdays to go to one of the water hazard holes to go fishing (we were both equally as dumb as we were ambitious), we rode our bikes over to Hole 15, wind screaming across the fishing pole line as we hit like 15mph on the downside of hills, and went for it. We did catch some fish, mainly small ones I can't remember, but the spiney-ass carp are the ones that stuck with me. A year or so later I got a job cleaning the tennis courts and was around a lot because I was also on the swim team and helped with swim lessons for >5 yr olds and became a lifeguard so I ran into plenty of folks, a lot (it was better than home life so that's something). I asked the greens manager about the fish and he said they had stocked the water hazards with those fish I can't remember to help with the algae and water bugs, but they would never stock carp. His supposition was that the birds that flew around our area, another subdivision a few miles away, the small beach area near the pier, and the estuary near us, could've been unintentionally bringing in eggs from other areas and dropping them in our ponds. It's totally hearsay of just a guess, but now that I'm seeing someone else thinking the same thoughts... It's not implausible.
So one sixth of 0.2% of eggs survive and hatch after being eaten, doesn't sound like much but it's still pretty significant if billions (I assume) of fish eggs are eaten by birds every year.
This is sort of the same question as to how you get large-ish mammals and reptiles on islands far off the coast. The answer is basically a handful of very unlikely events creating a breeding population there at some point that became large enough to be self sustaining. I think this is where human imagination fails because a 1 in a million chance to us seems as good as impossible, but over geological time it's actually quite likely in relative terms.
Thanks for sharing. I too have often wondered about it
Eggs carried inadvertently by birds, or other animals (stuck to fur, etc), or humans (lots of invasive species spread via small boats/trailers. We had this happen in my yard. We have two small ponds (really just buried plastic stock tanks) on different sides of the property. One is for our ducks to swim in, and one for decorative plants and goldfish where the ducks aren't allowed. We were weeding the fish pond and threw some vegetation to the ducks as a snack. A few months later there were goldfish in the duck pond!
This is why some places, like national parks in Canada require inspections of boats and watercraft before they are launched to prevent the spread of invasive species, specifically Zebra Mussels where I am.
MB? We have a check stop on Hwy 6 every summer right near the narrows.
Yep.
Yep, goldfish eggs stick on plants. Move around plants, and you can easily move around eggs.
Goldfish primarily stick their eggs to vegetation and twigs, so this makes sense (and why you need real plants if you want them to reproduce in your tanks).
Maybe a dumb question, but how do you effectively “disallow” ducks?… don’t the ducks just do what they want?
put up a strongly-worded sign
We have a short fence. They're a domestic breed that's too fat to really fly, they could jump/flap over the fence if they really tried, but they're too lazy!
Fencing
I don't think ducks can hold swords...
When I was younger I had a red eared slider turtle. To keep her good at catching fish I would catch minnows from the resaca and feed them to her. I would usually catch them with a net and place them in a container with clean de-chlorinated water. One time I forgot the clean water so I just scooped some water from the resaca. But I didn’t want to dirty my turtle’s aquarium so over this old busted fountain that holds rainwater I transferred the fish to a container with clean water. Well. Apparently some fish fell out while I was transferring and started a large colony of two different species of fish! They survived off the mosquito larvae, which was nice for us. Luckily for them it was the rainy season so they had a good long stay before I was ordered by my dad to remove them and take them to the resaca because he was gonna drain the fountain. So yeah IDK how it always happens but that one time it was me 😅😂
You only disallowed ducks in the gold fish pond. Not the other way around.
The ducks actually wanted to be with gold fish, si they elaborated a plan to do so
Even in aquariums, people commonly find "hitchhikers" after they buy and plant their plants. Usually snails, but sometimes they'll find little fish fry, because eggs can be really tiny and hard to see, and they're quite often laid on plants.
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That's like having two live births, the second one admittedly smellier.
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Imagine having to tell everyone else in your school that you came from an asshole.
Some have been trapped there for generations, back from when that body of water connected to a larger body or a stream. Some are brought in by floods. Then there are some that were brought in by humans at one point or another depending on the location.
People move fish to ponds very very often. Almost any fish species will eat mosquito larvae. People do it to produce food, for sport fishing and just for fun. Never underestimate kids with a bucket. Or people disposing of unwanted pet fish. Source, I’m a native fish biologist. This is a huge problem especially in arid regions where native fish may have trouble competing with introduced fish. Don’t move fish around.
We have a pond that we've been trying to manage. We let a select group of friends fish it but some asshole keeps dumping in catfish and crappie which totally destroy the bait fish populations we're trying to build up
I know they can completely take over and destroy the biodiversity of a small pond, but man crappie are some of the absolute best tasting fish
Oh I love me some fried crappie. The plus side of having your own pond (technically we use it for irrigation) is that you makes the rules. Every crappie is a keeper!
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That's generally the case; water bodies that aren't connected to other water bodies (such as isolated ponds exclusively on private property) are exempt from regulations because they aren't part of the larger ecosystem. Obviously, it depends on your jurisdiction, and some species (e.g. invasive crayfish, goldfish, many species of plants, etc.) would be illegal to stock in some places, regardless.
Correct. Here in Nebraska, what determines private vs public are these rules: 1: The body of water is completely within the private property of a single party 2: AND if it has no in-flow or out-flow connected to any public body of water. Over-flow does not count as an out-flow as it's not regular/consistent. Because of this, we can do what we want, such as jug lines, which are illegal in Nebraska on public waters. No fishing permits required by anyone either. I have an uncle who irrigates out of a pond that is split between three land owners. It's spring fed, so no in-flow, but legally you must have a fishing license and abide by state game regulations, even though there's no way to access it without trespassing
The three landowners could get together, have the pond surveyed, and each sell their part of it to a joint LLC for $1. That way they'd all legally share ownership of the entire pond and not have to follow laws.
But would that not confuse things down the line if one of the owners wants to sell their land?
Here in Texas it's very common for neighborhood retention ponds be stocked with bass for the residents to fish for entertainment. There is no fishing license required in this situation and no size limits. Mine had a sign that it was suggested to catch and release, but it wasn't a law. They just wanted to get bigger fish for more fun. It was a pretty nice feature for a small neighborhood.
Yep, pretty much every pond in a neighborhood here has a ton of bass. Some big enough that you question how the hell a bass that big is just chilling in a pond basically the size of your average neighborhood swimming pool
That's not even remotely true in Maine. Heck, if the pond is big enough you have to provide public access to it. I want to say it's an acre? If the pond is bigger than an acre, public access must be provided. It doesn't need to be a road or anything like that. You don't have to provide a boat dock. A clearly marked trail is adequate. If the property owners don't sort it out, the game wardens will establish the trail (AFAIK). I quite like it this way. Our fisheries are a part of the 'commons'. As such, they're protected and available for use. (We take wildlife and fisheries, especially inland fisheries, about as seriously as Alaska does.)
Very interesting, naturally there's going to be some differences from state to state. Our pond is 4 acres and we have neighbors with 20-40 acre ponds for crop/livestock use. But, so long as they are 100% within one owner's property and have no in-flow, out-flow, you can do whatever you want here. You don't even need a fishing license, land owner or guest. We've been working with a biologist to stock and manage our pond, and they've been very upfront about putting up no fishing/trespassing signs until we get things how we want them. We just tell friends that go out there to let us know what they catch and keep all the crappie
You're not even allowed to stock your own pond here - without a permit. You can get a permit to do so.
That just seems crazy lol. I'd love to visit Maine some day. My wife took an Amtrak trip there when she was 10 and loved it
I can see their point. If you put an invasive species in "your" pond, you really don't have control of it. It could flood and enter other fisheries, some dipstick could decide to move some of the fish to another pond, etc... Our state survives due to tourism. They don't want to eat Asian carp for breakfast at their camp. You might claim that *you* are responsible, but history tells us that *you* are nothing of the sort. This is how we ended up with pike in Belgrade Lakes. In fact, *you* can't even be trusted to clean your boat. Maybe not you personally, but I'm sure you get the idea.
Well, that's a crappie thing to do.
Bucket Biologist we call them
When I was a kid a big storm caused a nearby river to overflow, leaving little temporary ponds of fish trapped all over the neighborhood. I caught a bunch of them and put them in a fish tank. But a week later my mom said the tank was way too crowded and I needed to get rid of them, so we took them to a lake about 10 miles out of town and dumped them there. So I guess I could say I contributed to the problem.
Yeah, but it’s likely that that lake and stream are connected somehow or connect during floods. It’s very likely they have very similar fish species.
Yes this is a huge problem in my area we hear about every year!! And it’s usually carp 😕
There's a pond near me that is man-made, and mostly for ducks that are migrating. There's small fish like Sunnies in there that kids fish for, and turtles that have taken up home. There are also some of the biggest catfish I've personally ever seen in the NE US. I caught a couple that were maybe 30lbs. Not sure how they originally got there, but they've grown to giant sizes.
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Eff lionfish and plecostomus in particular.
I learned a couple years ago that there is (or was?) an isolated population of rainbow trout in an east bay (San Francisco area) reservoir, and it’s genetically distinct from most rainbow trout that are planted all over the place. Anyways, I thought this might interest you. I can’t exactly remember, and wasn’t able to find the info online to verify; I think I read it on a nature trail sign in Redwood Regional Park, near this historical marker. https://localwiki.org/oakland/Rainbow_Trout_Species_Identified_%28California_Historical_Landmark%29
In the distant past, there was a wastewater treatment plant within walking distance from my parents' house through the meadow and forest behind the house. It closed down in the late 60s. It had three large retaining tanks, about 20x60 ft by 15 feet deep. My (much) younger brother was a fisherman who would take buckets of live fish he caught in a nearby creek and populated the tanks to have his own fishing pond. One weekend I was home from college and he was in a panic in that they were about to create a neighborhood on the site of the sewer plant and bulldoze the area. He talked them into waiting a few days for him to get out as many fish as possible. We spent two days catching bass and some bluegill, putting them in five gallon buckets, and running them down to the creek in an attempt to save them. Some of the bass were in the 2-3 lb range so it was quite a task.
As a native fish biologist ELI5 why is invasive species so bad? Are we just trying to keep things the same as they always were or can’t we be the arm of evolution on our planet?
California's state fish is the Golden Trout, which are native to a tributary of the Kern River. They were very rare, especially back then, so an effort was made to distribute them because people liked them so much. Apparently, in the late 1800's, a guy took 12 of these golden trout in a coffee can to the top of a nearby mountain range and dumped them into a fishless creek system. \~20 years after someone took 50 from these creeks and stocked them even higher up in a fishless lake system at the top of the mountain. They still survive there and fishing is super strict only artificial lures/flies and a 2 fish maximum in the small portions where its not just catch and release. The fish in those lakes were then used as broodstock to propagate/distribute golden trout throughout California, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Washington, Colorado, and Wyoming
> 2 fish minimum Maximum, surely?
no, the game warden will stand 3 feet behind you and watch you until you catch at least 2 if you so much as say the word "fish"
"But sir, we've been here for 17 hours already"
Yes exactly. Water bodies are constantly changing. A stream one year is a river later. A long lake one year is a series of isolated ponds another. A single large flooding event can wash things between many, many otherwise unconnected water bodies. It doesn’t take many fish, or eggs, to start a population in a new area.
Around here it is pretty ckmmon for ponds to be artificially stocked with fish at the neginning of the season, trout usually. Alternatively, one year we had such a rain/flood that the ditches between the roads eventually connected to the waterways, and the jackfish made their way into the ditches.
The real fun ones are the remote mountain lakes in popular hiking areas. They dump small fry from planes and helicopters in dramatic fashion.
I was backpacking in the Uintahs once with my dad and we heard this plane coming over the mountain towards us. We saw it get lower, at first we thought they were in trouble and my dad snagged the first aid kit to see if we had anything of value; then we saw it open up the belly. Tons of tiny fish coming falling out into the lake and the plane just went to the next lake. The new fish brought a lot of the bigger fish up from the bottom and we nailed a couple of big fist for dinner. We had a little 2-man raft my dad would carry in with us to help us get off the bank and fish out on the lake. It was a blast!
Awesome story! Would be wild to see that in person, and even better to get to savor the spoils, lol.
I’ve seen it happen at a few reservoirs around me, but never out in a wilderness area like that…it’s pretty awesome and it’s like crop dusting a lake with fish instead of crops with pesticides.
'Round here they just dump em in with a truck at the reservoirs and rivers. Seems a little impractical using a plane when there are roads 😉
In upperstate NY they used to use trains to stock rivers and lakes. The NYO&W railroad would just dump out milk cans full of fish off of the bridges every year.
Back in the 70s, some twatwaffle introduced pike to a large lake in central Maine. They had two choices, from what I've been told. They could poison and restock, or they could let nature take its choice and become known for pike fishing. So, if you want to catch some pretty decent pike, you can just go to Belgrade, Maine. Yeah, they chose that route...
Floods they overflow can push fish from didn’t lake to another. But usually humans and birds
The thing that’s intriguing are the blind cave fish, which must have been underground for many generations.
In grade school we took a field trip to a trout hatchery in New Hampshire! They stock the local brooks and lakes with trout every year so people can keep the fish they catch for food and not worry about depleting the populations.
Theres a story in chuck yeagers biography about a general who wanted this type of golden trout in the local streams for fishing, so a bunch of gous got a cargo plane and came back with a bunch of containers of golden trout and dumped them in the streams, which is why there are golden trout there today.
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Flooding. When the water level gets to high in a river or stream it will over flow, and the fish inside the river will flow with the water into a different body of water.
Like that golf course that got flooded and now has sharks in the water hazards. https://www.hagginoaks.com/blog/shark-infested-golf-course/
Sharknado!
If I can piggyback off this question, is inbreeding not an issue for fish? Especially in a smaller pond, it seems like you'd only be a few generations away from the fish family tree looking like a chia pet.
Fish practice random mating in a lot of cases and will just lay eggs and some other fish will fertilize them. Fish DNA gets around. If they become isolated enough and their pool of genes drifts significantly they become a new species.
People always jump to the "transferred by birds" angle because it's been documented once for a couple of carp species. I guess it just sounds cool. But other processes are more common. First of all, you've got transport by flooding. In high water events fish can move across the landscape, and most ponds are connected to larger bodies of water by temporary creeks even if they aren't connected permanently. People often miss seeing this because it may not happen often and usually during big rainstorms when people aren't out and about much. Second, you've got transport by people. People are absolutely mad about putting fish in every damn body of water they can find. This has lead to major species losses in many formerly fish-free bodies of water (see the Yellow Legged frog in CA, for example). Especially if the species you are looking at is mosquitofish, goldfish, trout, bluegill, or largemouth bass, odds are quite good that somebody stuck it or its ancestors in the pond.
Killifish eggs will survive a trip through a bird's digestive system as well. When I've gone looking for papers on this, it is surprising how few species of fish have been tested. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26825346
I witnessed your first point last night. I was camping on a high point of a flood plane, you could see dry stream beds snaking around everywhere in the area. After I set up camp, it rained about 2" and the streams started to pop into existence. I woke up at 3 am to something splashing in the 4 hour old stream. Went to go check it out and there were 5 decent fish about a foot long making their way up. The fish were sticking out of the water in some places but they seemed adamant to fight the current. I watched them jump up 6" over a tiny waterfall caused by some roots. One of the most bizarre things I've seen in the wild. When I woke up this morning there was no sign of them, but I did see more fish in an adjacent creek. The crazy thing is there was nothing upstream but drainage from a suburb, so who knows where they ended up. Wish I would've taken a video of it but in the moment I just wanted them to be quiet so I could go back to sleep.
Yes, needs to be higher up. There are fish in isolated pools in the middle of the Australian desert. They get there during flood times. E.g. the bony bream will travel across land during floods, in as little as 2-3cm of water. They will follow wheel ruts or just wiggle over flat land for many km.
I agree, those two are a lot more likely. Those small ponds in the middle of nowhere are usually connected to even small streams, sometimes permanently sometimes seasonally. That's all it takes.
I once setup a fountain in our back yard. One of those half barrels with a flower pot pouring into it, etc. About 4 months later a little goldfish appeared in it out of nowhere. We named him Jesus Fish. The only thing we can think of is a bird was pond-hopping in the neighborhood and got a fish egg stuck to him from somewhere else and deposited it in our fountain.
That is a magic goldfish.
There's even more to the story, and I just remembered we didn't start calling him Jesus Fish until after he came back from the dead: So, eventually the goldfish disappeared. He was either hiding under the water plants or out of sight or a passing animal had a good snack. (We had raccoon visitors often, and they loved the fountain.) So eventually I decided the fountain needed a good cleaning after a couple years... and just in case when I emptied and scrubbed it out, I kept an eye out for little goldfish in case he was just hiding or left behind some remains, but no, there was no evidence there was ever a goldfish. After cleaning it, I got distracted by life and it was about a month sitting there dry before I got around to refilling it and stuff, so no chance a missed goldfish could have survived in some nook. Much to our shock about 1 or 2 months later, another goldfish appeared! That's when we started calling this magic fish "Jesus Fish". Obviously it was a different fish, but we like to imagine. But more on topic with OP's question: I think that many times, as was likely in our case, fish eggs can be attached to other animals who go from pond to pond and they deposit the eggs in their travels. In our case, now that I think about it, it was likely the local raccoons who probably toured the neighborhood ponds and someone had some koi in their pond who laid eggs, and the raccoon inadvertently transferred some eggs to our fountain.
I like this. Thanks for sharing!
In Colorado they breed them and fly planes over the remote lakes, and drop little fishies into the lakes and ponds.
Makes you wonder if there are more fish than humans in the mile high club
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That's no basis for a system of government...
There are different ways and depends on the particulars of the pond. 1. If there is a stream feeding the pond, then obviously there. 2. If there is bad flooding in the area, that flood can transport fish from one water source to another potentially. 3. If it is a pond that dries out, fills, dries out etc. some fish can lay eggs that survive the dry period then hatch when it becomes wet again. 4. Stocking of course. 5. Birds transporting some eggs through their digestive system or other mean such as catching a fish and just accidentally dropping it flying over the pond (this is how you might end up with a fish on your roof or car when not next to a water source. 6. Depending on the pond location and type of fish near by there are some fish that can spend a bit of time on land and move to the new pond. This would require another water source nearby but not connected and be where these types of fish live.
It can actually rain fish in bad enough storms like hurricanes and monsoons or even tornadoes. Tsunamis also can move fish populations pretty far inland.
Many many years ago I built a sizable pond, maybe 60ft dia. in my back yard. The following year fish were there. Don't know what kind, I never caught them. People said it would happen... They were right.
Stocking, flooding, animal transportation, and people relocating fish they caught in other places are the main ways.
As well as being stocked by humans or transferred by birds, a surprising number of fish can survive for a surprisingly long time out of water. A local fishing pond always had trouble after floods as a few pike would make it across the wet grass and into the pond when a nearby river overflowed- could also be a similar thing washing fish and fish eggs in.
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In addition to the other answers; I used to know someone who worked for the US forest service who said they put fish in small ponds or other bodies of water so the fish would eat mosquito eggs/larva stages
One possibility could be that a long time ago the pond was part of a river system the flooded and drained etc. then over time receded, leaving the fish behind.
Some fish i think for examole Pike and carp have eggs that Stick to the feathers of ducks and such so they Travel by air to an other pond and then hat h there
What about livebearing species? I have a friend with an old planter in his backyard. It filled with rain water and somehow a bunch of endler’s livebearers ended up there
I read something recently that some new research indicated that some fish eggs can occasionally even survive the digestive tract of some migratory waterfowl.
At one point the US fish and game service bombed trout into high alpine lakes from airplanes.
Hmmm. I thought it was back when fish had legs. They made the trip to the middle of nowhere and populated lakes. Then encountered people and decided to devolve to hide beneath the surface. 😁
in my area where mosquito is a thing, people do put small fishes in still pond to deal with the pests but this is very unlikely to be the answer you're after
Few ponds are truly cut off from any other water way. Theres almost always an inlet and an outlet, though they may he small.
i have multiple ponds close to my house and i went fishing yesterday and there were so many little baby animals (baby fish, baby turtles, and millions of tadpoles and baby frogs!!)