Too many fish !

[tbdomenz]

New to this forum :nananananana: We have a DIY 3yr old 2500-3000 gal pond with aquascape waterfall and 3000gph pump. All is well and maint is minimal but........ The neighborhood predators are enjoying the largest fish and the Komets and Shebunkins are multiplying like rabbits. So far this year we lost our 3 Koi and 2-3 of the largest Komets.
I would like to get the small fry out of the pond (there's probably 34 doz fish total, the largest is about 6" ) but it's impossible to catch them and I don't want to drain the pond. Any ideas? any natural predator fish I could introduce to harvest the fry?
Tom in Schaumburg Illinois

 

[CliffandJoann]

Orfs are the fry population control in our pond. We have a pair of them.

As far as catching fish in a net, my head guy constantly walks around
the pond with a net scooping out stuff floating on the top. He often just lays
down the net in the pond and leaves it there because he plans on using it later on.

My point being is that our fish are used to the net, and
swim in and out of it, thus making it easy to net any fish, if we need to do so.

 

[tbdomenz]

Orfs!? What are they? Will implement the net idea!

 

[CliffandJoann]

Ya know, I have thousands of fish photos and couldn't find any close-ups
of the orfs. At one time we had 5, but I talked the head guy into giving away
3 as they get big...Ours are about 20-22" long, maybe longer.

Count 4 fish up, the salmon color fish withn the little black speckles is the Orf.

 

[Philanthropist]

Ok this is easy have one sunfish. Like a bluegill.

 

[tbdomenz]

Hmmmmmm, sunfish,bluegill, that might be easy to implement since we know 3 familys that have waterfront homes ! Then we can eat him at the end of the season or maybe we should leave him inn the pond over winter?