Which Is More Important, Integrity or Company Size?

This post, like several I have made on this blog over the years, may strike some as overly negative. There is, after all, that old saying that if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. Luke 6:37 tells us not to criticize, or it will all come back on us. My understanding of that verse is that finding fault with others for no good reason is indeed sinful, and to be avoided. But the converse of that is Ephesians 5:11: “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.” In 2 Corinthians 11:12-15, Paul calls out false apostles, names them as servants of Satan masquerading as servants of righteousness, and ends by saying of them, “Their end will be what their actions deserve.” I am not Paul, and so will stop short of making a pronouncement on the eternal fate of some of my ethically-challenged competitors; but I think it safe to say it’s reasonable to make you cognizant of their deception, so that you may take it into consideration when entrusting someone with your fishery.

Imagine someone said to you he knew a great heart surgeon, very skilled, who worked at the largest hospital in the area; this surgeon had been the subject of a couple ethics inquiries, but he still had his license, and as far as you know had been cleared in at least one of the inquiries. Would you even consider hiring that man if you needed open heart surgery? Or perhaps you needed a lawyer, and someone mentioned to you an attorney who had decades of experience, worked for a prestigious firm, and had only been disbarred once but now had his license back. Would you even consider hiring him?

Now let’s bring it home to lake and pond management. A company with offices in a dozen different states and dozens of employees may look impressive on paper; but they’re never going to send more than one or two of those employees at a time to work on your pond or lake. More importantly, if that one or two employees just got out of college a year or three ago, what are the odds they will know as much about private lakes and ponds as someone with twenty-five years of experience working on private waters? Now to the real question: imagine you’re impressed by all those offices and employees, and you’re leaning toward hiring that big company...but you find out that they are being openly deceptive with their marketing, and such deception is in plain sight for anyone to see, on their website.

There’s a lake management company headquartered on the east coast; they have offices in several states across the Southeast, including Tennessee. They have a blog, just like we do. One of those blog posts recommends stocking specklebelly sunfish in your pond so you can have bigger sunfish.

Specklebelly sunfish are a cross between a bluegill and a redear sunfish. As hybrids, their offspring are genetically inferior, just as are the offspring of bluegill and green sunfish (the most common variety of hybrid bluegill), just as are F1 largemouth bass. The author of the blog seems aware of this, because their article on types of fish to stock in a pond states that specklebelly sunfish will not spawn...

Which would indeed be very helpful if it were true; you could stock a few, feed them large amounts of fish food, and potentially grow some big ones. There’s only one small problem: it’s a lie. Whether an intentional one, or just through incompetence, begs the question; but it’s inescapably a lie.

The following is a summary of, “Hybrid Sunfish for Stocking Small Ponds,” by William E. Ricker (1948):

Hybrid sunfish from male bluegill and female redear parents have been used to stock new ponds. Using densities of the order of 2,000 fingerlings per acre, excellent growth has been obtained. In the absence of competition from other species, the hybrids have increased by 3-4 ounces in their first growing season, and have achieved a pound in weight three summers after stocking—without the use of fertilizers. The F1 hybrids included only 2 percent females. They have spawned successfully, however, and in two ponds produced F2 broods in what seem to be fairly good numbers per female involved. The F2 brood has been exclusively male, but only 13 have been examined so far. The hybrids seem to be excellent for stocking in small ponds, provided contamination by other fish can be avoided. That is, their rate of reproduction is so slow that overcrowding does not occur, and growth is rapid throughout life. However, other fishes have appeared in all but one of the ponds stocked to date, the usual adventitious arrivals having been green sunfish and black bullheads. These fish very quickly crowd the pond and restrict first-year hybrid growth to as little as a third of an ounce...

It would be one thing if a random pond owner not claiming to be a professional fisheries consultant were giving you bad information. The article on fish stocking on my competitor’s website was written by one of their biologists, i.e. someone with a degree in fisheries science; this is someone who’s expected to know the basic biology of the fish they’re stocking for you, the fish they’re trying to sell you.

Why is it a big deal if those specklebellies spawn? Because the offspring of any hybrid is genetically inferior; this is why most any publication on pond management that mentions the more traditional hybrid bluegill, the bluegill-green sunfish cross, will note that pond owners that stock those fish will need to kill off their ponds chemically every few years and re-stock from scratch, because of the inferiority of the fish’s offspring. Guess what? The offspring of bluegill-redear hybrids are just as genetically undesirable as are those of bluegill-green sunfish hybrids, as are those of F1 largemouth bass. Every pond I have ever worked on that had had hybrid bluegill for ten years or longer, the bluegill averaged about three inches long. Likewise, most of the worst-performing bass ponds and lakes I have ever worked on were ones that had had F1 largemouth for ten years or more.

Lest you think this is an isolated instance, or perhaps an honest mistake, I’ll next point you to a different blog post on that same website bragging about a pond they have grown big bass in. The first instance of what seems to be less than shining integrity is the fact that although they mention very specifically the year the pond started producing big bass, they neglect to name the year it was initially stocked - even though they did the stocking. There’s not a pond that I have ever written a word about that I can’t tell you what year we first stocked it, because I keep good records; the author of the article in question names very specific quantities and species of fish that were stocked, so he no doubt knows what year it was stocked...Why then does he neglect to mention that crucial detail? Because he’s trying to avoid being compared to biologists with superior knowledge and ability who get better results in less time. We manage a pond only a half-acre larger than the pond in question in the blog post in question; it has produced bluegill ten ounces bigger than the biggest specklebelly sunfish caught from their pond, and largemouth nearly a pound larger than the largest bass caught from their pond, with the substantial, drastic difference that the big fish from our managed pond were actually caught by hook-and-line angling, meaning the pond was doing what it was intended for, whereas all of the big bass from their pond had to be caught via electricity because their entire management strategy is fundamentally flawed and invariably results in ponds for which the landowner typically only sees his biggest fish when it has just been stunned by AC current because said fish won’t bite when he fishes for them.

In that same blog post about a big-bass pond, the author of the post states that they stocked F1 largemouth because pure Florida bass wouldn’t survive because the pond is in Virginia. Conner Lake produced the Virginia state record largemouth of 16 pounds 4 ounces; Conner Lake has Florida bass. Briery Creek Lake has produced two bass over sixteen pounds, and in one two-week period in 1995 produced eight bass over thirteen pounds; Briery Creek Lake has Florida bass. This article on the history of trophy largemouth fishing in Virginia notes that anglers seeking a trophy should look for lakes with greater than 50% Florida alleles (genes) - which only happens when pure Florida bass have been stocked at some point in the lake, and lots of them:

https://www.virginia-outdoors.com/articles/trophylargemouth.html

Here’s the best way I can put it to you about who to choose to develop your fishery: the blog post my competitor made bragging about growing big bass in a small pond gives the specific quantity of forage they’re stocking per year: 3,000 pounds. They don’t give a price, but unless they’re selling the fish to the pond owner at cost, which is illegal and a violation of the federal Sherman Anti-Trust Act, that quantity of fish is costing the landowner, bare minimum, $30,000 to $40,000, annually. For a one-acre pond.

That’s more than the owners of the 1.5-acre pond I allude to a couple paragraphs above, the one that has produced largemouth to 10 pounds 2 ounces and bluegill to 2 pounds 14 ounces, have spent with me, on fish food and fish combined, on that pond in the ten years I have worked on it. I could grow a world-record bluegill in that 1.5- acre pond in three years if they spent that kind of money. Give me that kind of budget on any pond or lake two acres or bigger in Georgia or Florida or Alabama or Mississippi or Louisiana or Texas or North or South Carolina and I’ll grow a new world-record largemouth in ten years, or a world-record bluegill in eight. But that other company has to get the landowner to spend that much because they don’t know what they’re doing.

Would you rather have a friend who’s great fun to be around, but will eventually kill you so he can have your wife? Or someone who sometimes tells you the truth even when you don’t want to hear it, but will stick with you through thick and thin, and perhaps someday save your life?