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tadpole glut


blockend

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Weird starter topic for a newbie, but has anyone else noticed a larger than usual tadpole count this year? My local pond was solid with them a few weeks ago. Also, has anyone noticed whether perch eat small frogs? It's not a thing I've given a lot of thought to but a predator (not a pike, there's none in there) was going crazy after them the other day.

 

I suppose if there's a glut they'll eat whatever's in season!

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Almost all fish eat whatever is in season if they are able to.

" My choices in life were either to be a piano player in a whore house or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference!" - Harry Truman, 33rd US President

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Cant recall ever seeing it but i have no doubt perch and any other predatory inclined fish would take advantage of them. I have seen pike take full grown frogs though.

 

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Despite there being Tadpole flies (exact imitations as well as generic patterns) in the trout fishing world I have never seen trout actually take them (ie the real thing).I use trout as an example as one of the places I used to fish for them used to be stuffed with tadpoles in the spring.

 

Ive never seen any coarse fish take them either but that may be just one of those things. Have others actually seen it? If not I wonder why they dont?

 

Oh and welcome to AN Blockend.Interesting first post.

And thats my "non indicative opinion"!

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I've found trout stuffed with tadpoles and frogs many times. I see no reason why other fish wouldn't eat them too.

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Thats interesting Andy.I know several trout anglers who also say they dont eat them (er the trout that is not the anglers themselves!) I dont say it as Ive also heard others like yourself say they do! its just that I never saw any evidence on this particular water and wondered why?

And thats my "non indicative opinion"!

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Thank guys. A friend pointed out the amount of tads he'd seen this year and the next day in our local millpond at the other end of the country it was the same, a solid black mass of the things.

Shortly afterwards there were a lot of juvenile frogs leaping out the way of something making a bow wave in the shallows but I couldn't see what it was. There are perch in the pond but I've never caught one above a few ounces and it crossed my mind if the local carp were tucking in. A number of species turn predatory beyond a certain size, bream for example but it'll probably remain a mystery.

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I used to fly fish a fairly big gravel pit in Norfolk lightly stocked with rainbows, and each spring the trout were mainly down the end where the frogs and toads spawned, and which was full of tadpoles in the margins. Later on they'd spread back out throughout the lake. I never saw a trout eating them though, so the two things could be unrelated, and I never tried to imitate them.

 

Interesting question! My gut feeling is that most fish will take advantage of an available food source, and we all know that very few tadpoles survive, so something's eating them. The newts in my garden pond used to stuff themselves with them!

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music

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Come on Budgie, give me some credit for having written enough about trout over the years for you to know I don't fish 'Rambo'. It's wildies or nothing. Rambos are the daftest fish alive and to prove the point, I once caught one spinning a fag-end. Rambos will eat anything that...

 

A: Goes plop!!!.....like stones, bird-****, slit-shot, ball-bearings from catties etc. etc.

 

B: Might be a pellet.

 

C: Anything smaller than themselves.

 

Look at powerbait. It's fluorescent stanky mush and Rambos love it. It looks like nothing alive or dead but it catches the daft idiots all day long, even when dangled from an oversized hook dangled under a massive bubble float. The same goes for corn. Most fish have to be introduced to it as food or in some cases their cyprinid (or is that cyprian....lol) sense of taste tells them it's a possible high protein food source. Rambos eat it because it's yellow and that's the only reason.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure Newt will tell me that wild Rambos, in their own waters are just as clever and wily as our wild brownies but over here, they're all tank-fed tourists with no brains and no experience of anything that isn't made from corrugated metal and fishmeal. I'm sure tank-reared brownies in the US are just as daft.

 

It takes a Ramboid at least a Winter or a couple of years to gain a bit of savvy and normally by that time, their lifespan is already limited to days. If people like that kind of thing, by all means go for them but there are far better 'flies' to choose from than tadpoles, which was the original point. A Cormorant, a Booby, a Jack Frost or an Ace Of Spades (which is kinds like a minnow or a tadpole I guess) will take Rambos anywhere.

¤«Thʤ«PÔâ©H¤MëíTë®»¤

 

Click HERE for in-fighting, scrapping, name-calling, objectional and often explicit behaviour and cakes. Mind your tin-hat

 

Click HERE for Tench Fishing World forums

 

Playboy.jpg

 

LandaPikkoSig.jpg

 

"I envy not him that eats better meat than I do, nor him that is richer, or that wears better clothes than I do. I envy nobody but him, and him only, that catches more fish than I do"

...Izaac Walton...

 

"It looked a really nice swim betwixt weedbed and bank"

...Vagabond...

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