Time to take out a few bluegill before the weather cools off. Four kids caught these in about an hour with 20 nightcrawlers. Home made hushpuppies, pinto beans, slaw and banana cream pie sealed the deal. Big fun. Good fishin'!!....WS

Looks like the Spongebob pole got a workout. Good times.

Those smiles make everything worthwhile!!!

Darn nice gills too!

Nice haul! Great report!

Those are nice gills, and the pics are even better.

I hope my girls can pull some out of our pond like that in a few years.

Great post.

Those fish look really nice. How have you raised such nice size bluegills?

Fantastic! This is what owning a pond is all about.

Hello James..

Some of the BG were dinosaurs. This is year three for our pond. My strongest recommendation would have to be "maintain good water color." The bottom of the food chain is important. Pea soup is a good thing. We lime every winter and fertilize every ten days when the water warms up. We have two feeders and feed primarily AquaMax 600. The bass are looking really nice too!

I am really impressed some of those fish are giants! I would love to catch a mess of fish that looked like that!!! What are the genetics on them? Are these fish native bluegill or the florida strain?

Nice fish. How big is the pond?

They're Coppernose Bluegill from Mississippi. The pond is about 3 acres. We let the BG and FH get a really good start before the bass were released. The bass are looking good too. The key is water color!

Where in MS did you get the CNBG ?

What do you mean about the water color being the key?

Pea soup is good. Feed the bottom of the food chain. We fertilize every ten days during the growing season. This has many benefits, many of which are peppered throughout this site on other threads. We lime every winter and fertilize every growing season.

Our pond is deep(22ft) and shaded by large hardwoods. Because of the shade, we're able to set the feeders to feed multiple times per day. This helps, but my biggest worry is always good water color.

Be sure you can control the pea soup. If it gets to thick it can spoil the pond as in a DO crash. There is a reason all the pond mgt literature warns of blooms with visibility of 12 inches or less.

We try to keep it at 12-18 inches. The pond is spring fed with a large watershed. It sits between two rises. Heavy rains pull bad water off the bottom very well. The kids jump off the dock almost daily in the summertime. We also exercise about 10 German Shepherds with a dummy launcher off the dam. All of this activity seems to keep fresh air pumped into the pond. At least thats what we hope!

Wayne Simanovich
www.simanovich.com

Wayne,
That’s a fantastic looking place you have. I checked out your web site and if your GS's are like all of mine, they love the pond.

Yea, the dogs love it. Some really sail off the dam. It's great for conditioning. Put oxygen in the water and work the dogs at the same time! This dog is awesome in the water. His water entry is like a top field trial retriever. www.simanovich.com/video/hub2

Wayne Simanovich
www.simanovich.com

Wayne, I checked out your site early this morning and am really impressed with what you are doing. I may get in touch some time as my wife and I have discussed a shepherd when our Chessie eventually passes. As an aside, I go to church with a very good friend of Richard Childress and need to ask him if he knows Johnny. They just got back from a 2 week trip to Richard's Montana cabin (a 12,000 sq.ft. getaway!) with him on his personal jet. Pretty cool. This guy builds rifles as a hobby and Richard has bought a bunch from him.

Sorry for the thread hijack, but just wanted to say I really like the dogs and the obvious commitment you have to training quality animals.