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Thread: Pond Mgmt 101

  1. #21
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    Default Fish Population


    OOOPS! I missed the fish population question. The best way to determine what is in the pond is to fish it. See how many bass you catch as well as catfish and bluegill. A farm pond is like raising cattle, you have to harvest some each year to allow the younger ones some room to grow. Harvest those small 8" - 10" bass as well as a slug of perch. Harvest 15 -20 perch for every bass you take. If all the perch are 5-6" then throw them on the bank and let the coons feast on them. Plant some under your tomatoes or flowers just get rid of them

    If you have anything else to ask then holler.

    Be good.

  2. #22
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    Today will be spent fishing. I am going to the Canadian Co. pond and catch as many bluegill and redear as I can and transport them by an aerated holding tank to the Hinton lake. My goal is to stock a minimum of 500 adult sunfish in the Hinton lake or an average of 50/acre. I have stocked approx 175 in the Hinton lake. Today I will catch what I can and then deliver them to the lake. While I am at the Hinton lake I will set 3 perch traps in a 1 1/4 acre brood pond that was stocked last year with coppernose bluegill. I hope the traps will yield another 15 - 200 coppernose for stocking along with what I transport in. In addition I hope to harvest 25 LM bass from the 10 acre lake which will be filleted. We have to harvest a minimum of 200 - 250 bass this year in order to slowly bring the lake back into balance. So far approx 60 bass have been harvested this year. I will report the days success tonight.

  3. #23
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    Default No glowing?

    Cricket George,

    Shoot! I was hoping to glow in the dark! Well, at least my husband will start eating any fish I catch now. I am not sure there are any perch in the pond. We have never caught any. There are some turtles, crappie, and some huge bass. We have caught 5 lb bass in there before. Never seen a bluegill or perch. Don't even know if those are the same fish or not. I guess the perch is needed as feed for the bass. I know we don't want the crappie to take over since they spawn first. One catfish was caught about 8 years ago, but haven't caught one since. We don't get a lot of free time to fish though. There may be some in there that we just cannot catch.

    The pipe was put in one day without our knowledge. It was a private developer who put it in. The road was not wide enough for the county to take over so he widened it. Then the county took it over. We didn't know we could complain about it. Do you think it is too late? Could we plug up the pipe with something?

    The pond is not very big or deep. Round, maybe 6-9' deep, about 40-50' across. I sure appreciate your information about pond management. You have mentioned things I never even thought of before. Thanks for your help.

    Patti (Hope you were very successful in your fishing today.)

  4. #24
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    This afternoon was partly spent jerkin jaws on the Canadian Co lake. I was able to harvest 10 pairs of bluegill plus 2 extra males and 7 female redear. All the females had not spawned but had moved in in preparation. I would hook a male and get it in and pitch right back in and get the female. She was almost ready to burst in all cases. Most of the males were the size of salad plates, 9" average dark purple and burnt orange. They really put a bend in my jig pole. The 30 perch went to live in the Hinton lake this afternoon. I set 2 perch traps in the brood pond hoping to harvest 150 coppernose bluegill. In 2 hours the traps yielded safely 175 varying sized coppernose. The different sizes meant that there were several spawn sizes in the traps. The brood pond will have to be seined late this summer after the algae mats die back or we will experience the coppernose starting to stunt next year. The reproduction capability of these little fellas are incredible. We stocked 6 pairs in the vacant pond last year in April and now we estimate that we have over 400,00 offspring in the pond. We still have several spawns yet to go this summer. 2,000,000 offspring by Fall is a real possibilty. We need to seine the pond this summer or early Fall in order to make room for this years spawn. If this gets done and the harvest is transferred into the bigger lake then we should see an inprovement in the bass and crappie size soon (2 years)

    OOOhh, yeah I caught 1 10" LM and a 11" crappie in the big lake just before dark:D
    It was a productive day with looooong term benefits.

  5. #25
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    Default No glowing?

    Cricket George,

    Shoot! I was hoping to glow in the dark! Well, at least my husband will start eating any fish I catch now. I am not sure there are any perch in the pond. We have never caught any. There are some turtles, crappie, and some bass. We have caught 5 lb bass in there before. Never seen a bluegill or perch. Don't even know if those are the same fish or not. I guess the perch is needed as feed for the bass. I know we don't want the crappie to take over since they spawn first. One catfish was caught about 8 years ago, but haven't caught one since. We don't get a lot of free time to fish though. There may be some in there that we just cannot catch.

    The pipe was put in one day without our knowledge. It was a private developer who put it in. The road was not wide enough for the county to take over so he widened it. Then the county took it over. We didn't know we could complain about it. Do you think it is too late? Could we plug up the pipe with something? Last month we got so much runoff from the pipe that we think our grass carp got out when the water went over the bank. The bank is also eroding away there because of the amount of water that went over the bank.

    The pond is not very big or deep. Round, maybe 6-9' deep, about 40-50' across. I sure appreciate your information about pond management. You have mentioned things I never even thought of before. Thanks for your help.

    Patti (Hope you were very successful in your fishing today.)

  6. #26
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    Default

    Peke- OooH Gosh, You REALLY dont want the crappie in there at all. You need to put all the perch you can get in your little pond to feed your bass. That is what we are trying to change in the Hinton Lake. The bass are cannibilizing their young as well as the crappie's young.

    You are probably too late on the road culvert.

  7. #27
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    Default crappie

    ok so the bass will not eat the crappie young but will eat their own? The crappie will eat anything, including bass young? So no crappie at all in the pond would be good?

    Our house framers told us that they had gone to a neighboring pond and put what they caught into our pond! Didn't tell us about it until they had been doing it several weeks. Stealing from the neighbor's pond! They were the ones who put the crappie in. So we need to get them out?

    Thanks
    Patti

  8. #28
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    Peke - Yes the bass will eat the crappie young and their own young same with the crappie. The only way to effectively get the crappie out of the pond is to poison it and start over with fingerlings. You stock bluegill fingerlings and catfish fingerlings in the spring followed by bass in the fall or next spring. The framers did you no favors. I suspect you have bluegill in your pond you just don't know it.
    If you are catching crappie now throw them on the bank for the coons and keep feeding the coons with crappie. You and the coons will both enjoy the fun

  9. #29
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    Ok thanks for your help with this. The raccoons will love me!

    Patti

  10. #30
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    Default turtles

    Cricket George,

    I fished in my pond from 2:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. today. I caught a total of 3 fish. I did not catch even one bluegill. I caught 2 - 12" large mouth bass and threw them back. I caught a 13-14" crappie so I kept it to eat since you told me to get rid of the crappie.

    My question is should I do anything about the turtles in the pond? There seem to be a lot of them. I saw at least 5 at one time today. Do they eat any of the bass young?

    Thanks!
    Patti

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