Hi, this is my fist post here, I have been reading for days. I am a prior pond owner and I would like to get to know ya’ll by sharing my experience with that first pond.
Before I begin though folks please wish me well, I am going to view 15 acres on Saturday with a nice pond on it and room to build more so I may soon move from prior owner to current owner.
Ok now before I tell you the story of my pond understand that it was before I knew about Pond Boss at all. I had great results but I also had an existing pond in good shape so I think it may have been more forgiving to my mistakes. Just so ya’ll understand when you read about things like my self-stocking efforts and how I deal with bullheads I ain’t saying what I did was right just what I did and what happened and I simply did not know any better at the time.
So here is the story
In January of 2000 I took a job that moved me to Pennsylvania from Texas (I am now back in Texas) and we found a great house on 1.5 acres with a pond slightly over a half-acre. It was like a dream for me, I always wanted a pond and now I had one. I traveled a lot with that job but was totally into my pond whenever I was home.
I knew nothing about managing a pond other then I wanted fish and from my experience on a 1.5-acre pond I and some friends had self-stocked when in high school. I just wanted fish, lots of different kinds of them and I wanted to catch them in my back yard.
I did some stuff right, I took a small boat out and got depth readings on the pond it had several nice slopes and a few deep holes as deep as 15 feet. It was an older pond about 18 years old and in great shape. Lots of bluegills, minnows and a few small mouth bass were in it. Mostly it was bullheads though. Thousands of them a few big ones but mostly the typical thousands of 5 inchers and smaller.
I also came to the conclusion there was very little structure in the pond and knew nothing about cool PVC trees and what not so started to collect cinder blocks and broken concrete.
The bluegill were plentiful but all 4-5 inches, I did not really see this as a problem and did not understand about growing huge gills yet, figured they would grow if I fed them besides they were great food for bass and channel cats, this I did know.
So my goals became
1. Improve the bullheads to eating size
2. Put more small mouth in the pond because I like them better then LMB
3. Add some channel cats to eat all those brim
4. See if I could make some eating size brim 7-9 inches in length
Now I really did not know anything, I though I knew what to do and it worked out ok and that is why I want to share it.
First thing I did was go down to the sporting good store and bought a cheap deer feeder and set it up on a anchored floating platform. Fed fish 2 times a day a pellet feed, I bought what was cheapest, but they did eat it. This is actually a really effective way to feed fish and one of them lantern batteries lasts over a month cause it only ran for like 6 seconds at a shot.
Second I began a relentless killing of bullheads but different then most would do. My weapon was two ultra light rods and bait along with a chopping block and a hatchet! Anything under 9 inches got two chops, off with the big ugly head and the body chopped in two. Body parts when back in the pond and the heads in our compost piles. In the first summer I killed about 50-60 a night every night I was home and the population did not appear to decline until the first chills at the end of September.
Third, I decided to get SMB and CC the only way I knew how. Trips to the Schuylkill, Delaware, Lehigh and Susquehanna Rivers. I would keep lots of legal fish, put them in a cooler with a pump and water and any that looked healthy when I got home, in they went the rest got cornmeal and the knife along with a swim in hot oil.
Fourth I scavenged every piece of rock and rubble I could find and just tossed them in really with a boat and did basically a big X in the pond, first a line strait across the middle then another to make the X. Below is my very crude drawing of what I ended up with.
Results
By the spring of 2003 I had about 2 dozen nice small mouth bass in the pond they were healthy and tearing up the bluegills. The shallows were clear and when ever a bronze back would be prowling all the gills just seemed to vanish.
I also had about 30 really big channel cats and they were also eating bluegill like mad. Most were 14-24 inches again all self stocked from the area rivers. The cats were really healthy and we occasionally ate a few and continued to drop 12-14 inchers in to replace them sending them into corn meal at around 24-26 inches before they got too big.
The bullheads even got better it became possible to catch a nice stringer of them in the 11-12 inch range. I had a lot of help on this as my sons friends delighted in coming up to kill off the little ones and give them the chop! I am convinced they got big eating their little brothers we tossed pieces of back into the pond. I am sure if the new owner did not control them they are back to tons of little ones. We also dip netted all the fry clouds and tossed them on the rose bush beds.
I also tossed in some brown and brook trout they did ok and when we caught them in the fall they had grown to real eating size. In PA the stock 9-10 inchers! Basically we just grew them up for eating later in the year.
The blue gill got better not huge like the ones some of you guys grow but you could catch consistent 8 inchers by the time I left in 2003. I don’t think it would have ever gotten to real trophy gills because we ate to many bigger ones, I did not know to harvest females, etc but it did get better.
Also I had may be 6 nice large mouths cruising around.
I was so happy with that place then a competitor bought out the company I was working for and I had to move us back to Texas. I am happy to be back in the south, I LOVE IT HERE but leaving my pond was crushing.
So what would I do differently if I had the same place all over again?
First I would do a better job with structure with all the neato cool stuff you guys have shown me. PVC trees, buckets bolted together etc.
Second I don’t think I would have heavily stocked wild fish now that I understand the risks. I say I DON’T THINK because it worked well and it go my pond up to fishing strength in a year and I only had three years with it. Had I gone with buying smaller ones it would have been good for the new owner but not me and big fish are expensive. I guess since nothing bad happened the risk seemed worth the cost.
Third I would have made my platform for the feeder into a real “floating island” like you guys do here. I just did not know so I had a little “floating dock” for lack of a better term.
Fourth I would have made a real effort to reduce the bluegill a lot more then I did. All I really did was eat a few once they started getting bigger. I would have really reduced the females.
Fifth, I would have fed more food and I would have fed better quality food. I now realize this is probably the best ROI there is in the pond world.
Sixth, I would have used fish traps on the bullheads to get rid of more faster. I did not know there were fish traps back then.
Seventh, I would probably not have tossed in the LMB as I am sure they spawned and the SMB did not. It would have been a better use to stick to nothing but bronze backs.
Now, why I think I got away with some real mistakes
Mostly I would say because it was an older pond with a real good base of bluegills and minnows and other small critters in it. Because of this I really over stocked with adult fish but they did fine. It is also a lot cooler in PA then in TX so I think there was more oxygen in the water. There was also a good stock of plant life in the pond and I think that helped too along with plenty of rain to renew things.
I really think your risk in stocking “wild fish” is reduced in an older pond. The pond life has been exposed to virus, etc by then not kept in a sterile lab and has a better immune system built up. The pond is also well balanced and the ecosystem evolved. To me there is a lot more risk in wild stocking a brand new pond. I also think there is a lot more natural filtering going on in an evolved ecosystem as well. So if I did introduce any nasties with my wild stock I feel the ecosystem was probably better able to deal with it.
I also think it was easier to build up some decent sized bullheads because I had the black ones rather then the yellows that we have here in Texas. In Florida where I grew up many ponds had good size black bulls with no real management. I just think blacks are easier to manage then yellows or browns though I would not put any into any pond on purpose.
Here is what I think I did right
One, I fed my fish and I think this really helped my pond hold more life then it normally could.
Two, killing massive numbers of bullheads I think that is always well advised. I also think feeding them right back to themselves was good as well. I know they ate themselves I kept a few in a fish tank and fed them pieces of their brothers they seemed relish them. So this was two birds with one stone, shrink the population and feed the survivors. I also think my work to make them bigger was better then trying to eliminate them, I don’t think I could of ever terminated them all.
Three, I do think it was smart in an established pond to go with adult fish for my predators it let me start enjoying the pond faster, and I am thankful for the three years I had it.
Four, I am convinced my giant “X” of rubble was really a good move. In doing so I provided structure at every depth allowing the fish to move to where ever they wanted and still have cover and structure. If anyone wants to know how I kept track of my progress for future dropping it was easy just used a marker buoy.
Ok well that was a monster first post hope others learn a bit from my mistakes and I also hope to make a lot of new friends. Again wish me luck in acquiring our new place!