Thread: My pond absolutely shocked me today!!!

About 10 years ago I had a hole 8' deep dug in the shape of a water lily and over the years have been stocking it with fish. The sunfish are trained to wait for me at the dock know the daily supply of bread balls I throw them. Unusual was that they started doing this in March due to almost no ice formed any time this last winter.

Most fish are suspended in deeper water until the spawning urge and insects bring them shallow. Today about 20 sunnies went crazy for the bread. If I had cast lures to them, no doubt it would have been simple to catch them. Crappie and perch are still in deeper water but some were caught on different days in March.

Surprising was the 2.5' weed-eating carp that slowly left a weedy cove they were feeding in, followed to deeper water by small bass and sunnies like in a school. I stocked a carp years ago, but assumed it died so I added 3 more - all four were only 1' long. I never thought fish would swim with them.

The sunfish I assumed were small and few as were the bass. Man was I wrong! Bass and sunnies had spawned in different years and I saw many different sizes of both. Plus, I caught fish in deeper water that uncluded nice size sunfish!

Soon the pads will grow to the surface in three areas and fish will have good ambush areas to attack prey. One bass head was left on shore by a heron so I assumed few decent stocked bass were left. Wrong again! While sunnies were going beserk (as usual) for bread balls, a 1 3/4 lb bass was watching and I later saw another in a different area.

I got to remember to use small barbless hooks when casting lures. These fish are super aggressive and too easy to catch. Soon the local lakes will be in pre-spawn and also easy to catch fish in. Hope the action is as good as in the pond.

This is a shot of it after it filled 5' from rains in Nov.- the present after a severe drought (bottom photo) I assumed killed most of the fish. You can see the bottom that was supposed to be covered by 6' of water.