Welcome to a great pond managment forum.
Bruce is providing great basic advice. He professionally manages numerous ponds in NE.
Zooplankton in the jar were on the medium-large size range. I could not see their movements well enough to determine which of the two main groups was more common. Generally the larger forms are usually less abundant when lots of small overabundant bluegills are present. The larger forms are often near the surface when snow cover is present and during evening. Thus you were able to collect significiant numbers of them in your homemade shallow water sampler. When zooplankers are concentrated in clouds, the panfish will often follow or seek out these zooplankton clouds and feed heavily on them irregardless of the water depth. Overabundant small bluegills tend to overharvest the larger "more beneficial?" zooplankters.
Pondwater in a clear jar always appears a lot more clear in the jar than it does when one looks at the water in the pond. If the pond recently had a freeze - thaw runoff- freeze cycle, the water would tend to be more turbid even after a few weeks after the runoff event. Typically, water clarity under the ice will be the clearest of the entire year - exceptions do occur.
You ask - "If it's turbid under the ice and settles out in the jar, it pretty much has to be a carp/bullhead problem... right?" Not always. In many cases carp/bullhead, crayfish are very inactive under ice cover. The turbidity caused by their activiy usually does not become prevalent until the water reaches 45-50F and above. Occassional activity of winter hibernating muskrats can cause turbidity that persits for several weeks under ice cover.
Use this winter period to do homework of reading old posts and topics on this forum. Maybe a couple of our good "librarians" can locate a couple of good topics about fish sampling for you.
One task you can do this winter is take some soundings of the depths in various parts of the pond. Although a depth finder in open water will also work for this task. One of the main tasks for you fellows this spring and summer will be to sample the existing fish populations of your 5 ac pond. It is not unusual for a LMB-BG pond to become bass scarse and BG overabundant and this may be the case with "your" pond. This is usually due to several sessions of improper fish harvest. Fishing, trapping and seining the shallows are the main ways to assess a fish community. There are several topics that cover and somewhat describe how to best do this. Keep in mind sampling the fish is not just catching them, but more importantly keeping records of all species, all their lengths and often the weights of larger sportfish. These data will then help you & your friends, with some nudging from us, to get the pond on a path toward better fishing.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 02/10/08 07:35 PM.
