Pursuant to perusing the good stuff behind the SMB in farm pond link that Theo offers in an above post, I want to take the liberty of borrowing some of Dr Dave Willis' ideas and practices and re-post them here. They parallel some of my last-minute ideas for providing gravel or stone medium. Dr Willis notes:
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We usually took rubber feed tubs and filled them with gravel to provide substrate for smallmouth bass nesting. The biologists there believed, and I guess that I generally observed, that smallies would not spawn without that rock/gravel habitat.......we just went to the local farm supply stores, and bought the rubber feed tubs. I'm thinking something like 18-24 inches in diameter, and maybe 8-10 inches deep? We got the soft rubber ones because they would sink. The hard plastic ones would float until the gravel was added.
- NEDOC asks:
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Dave - how deep did you place the tubs?
- Dave responds:
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NEDOC -- That's always a tough one. In general, I'd say maybe between 3 feet and 6 feet. Generally, we'd put them deeper the clearer the water. I can't remember going shallower than about 3 feet, but of course, we didn't put smallies into muddy ponds. I have this general thought in the back of my mind that a lot of the nest-building centrarchids (bass, crappies, bluegills) often nest at about 1 to 1.5 times the water transparency. In that recent bluegill nesting study that we did, the average depth of the bluegill colonies was right at 3 feet. However, in extremely clear water, I have seen reports of smallmouth and spotted (Kentucky) bass spawning down to perhaps 20 feet.
- (some good discussion evolves, including Eric explaining his "shallow shelf with gravel" success) ....a little further, Dave adds:
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Slymer is also right to question whether tubs are needed. We only used tubs in the Kansas ponds because there was no rock whatsoever in the ponds. We wanted the gravel in the tubs to hold it in place, and not let it get lost by moving around, sinking into the silt, etc. If you have a better supply of gravel to spread in certain locations, the tubs certainly are not needed.
- - OK, so this practice sounds so darned similar to what I don't have (gravel beds) and what I do need (gravel beds). In fact, it kinda smacks of the saucer beds I put next to the cribs. It also plays to my thought of smaller piles of hand-placed gravel in a number of areas of the flats that remain water-free for the short term. So, I ask again...is this plan a crazy waste or a decent start? Heck, I don't even mind picking up the same rubber feed tubs; I know right where to get 'em.
