Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Property Projects & Construction SMB Collection Effort - The Flood

This video was shot sideways, sorry - but at least provides a few moments to appreciate the amount of water an 8" gate valve releases during my SMB Reproduction Pond collection this year. I wasn't sure what was going to happen with I opened the valve - lot's of things could have gone wrong - but ended up saving many hours of labor and had zero morts. Finally a project that went as planned.

Long video...

Fish weren't battered by the high flow? How many did you end up with?

Would an elongated plywood tank or ditch lined with epdm liner be better?

Glad it worked out for you!

I feared they'd be beat up, but had 100% survival even after caging them for 10 days and they were in great shape and had highest WR to date due to the YOY BG in the cell as forage. Ended up with about 500, which is also a record for me.

The 8" pipe definitely helped provide plenty of room, plus allowing the pond depth to drop to 6' from 9' helped reduce head pressure. I thought of a myriad of things that could have gone wrong, right before I released the valve, but everything worked as I'd hoped. That likely won't happen again in my lifetime - every dog has his day.

Glad to hear it.

As they say you can't sail unless you leave port.

One thing I learned about smallmouth bass: If you don't grade them well enough they will cannibalize and the total number will drop drastically. Have you found that yet?

I started out with 700 plus and ended up with about 150 in my two recirc systems tanks! And I did grade them into two sizes but apparently that wasn't enough.

Cecil,
I have not seen cannabalism that bad with smb in cages....that's very interesting...

You didn't? Maybe the different strains have different cannibalism rates? Or there is a different in tanks vs. cages?

In another post I noted that at one time I estimated 2500-3000 YOY lined up along the banks in Mid June. I noticed a few shooters - maybe 1.5" fish, and feared the worst. Sure enough, in a couple weeks the smaller fish [.5"] had been decimated and I saw nothing lining the shorelines. So, I had some pretty major cannibalism - plan on adding shallow cedar trees next Spring to try and provide some predation protection - it was a major failure of mine in this last season. Hopefully I can correct and see a bump in production - my eventual goal is harvest of 1,000 fish from .1 acre cell.

It would be interesting to figure out how many GPM that thing was putting out. You should be able to tell how many seconds it took to fill the tank by the timer on the video. A cubic foot is 7.48 gallons, but I don't know the diameter of the tank so I can't figure out how many cubic feet it is. Pi times Rsquared times height.

TJ, doesn't sound like a failure at all--nature "red in tooth and claw" in action. If you got 500 SMB--the biggest, toughest, fastest, meanest, already-trained-to-eat-blugill smallies--I'd say you're doing great, and whatever you decide to do with them, they'll excel, as only the cream of the crop are surviving. I'm sure you could get more total numbers by altering the environment, but done the way you did it this year, you're selecting for quality.

NB to Josh-Insist on the 2013 Vintage "TJ's Toughies" for stocking, rather than the watered down 2014 "TJ's MilqueToasts".

Good advice Yolk! I will insist upon the toughies instead of those potential pansies of 2014.

Diameter is 7 feet. So, 3.14 x 3.5 x 3.5 x I'm guessing 28-36" height. I think I read a standard 7' horse tank holds 550 G.

19 seconds to fill 550G, so that's 1,736 GPM - if the 550G volume is correct. Did I figure that correctly?

If I had a well with that capacity I would be happy happy happy!

You already declined the BG Assassin SMB strain this year, Josh!

You'll get the Mamsy Pamsys next year.

Man, I won't have any fish to peck at swimmers in this pond.