Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking Liming a bucket stocked pond or starting over?

I have to lime a 9 acre, very low pH pond that has never been properly stocked. It is 6-9 years old and according to the neighbor, he had bucket stocked it to some extent. It's to cold to really catch any amount of fish right now(46), but I have found one dead GSF on the shore.
I have a lot of work to do to get it ready for liming, fertilizing, etc. I have had advice to get it electrofished to see what was in it when the weather warms up, but I'm not very hopeful knowing the history and seeing the GSF.

So here's my thoughts. I want to stock it with FHM, TFS, CNBG in early spring, then F1 Bass in the summer and maybe some Hybrid SB in the next year or two. So here's what I'm thinking.

1. Get it electrofished when the weather warms up. And chance it being full of trash fish and have to nuke it anyway. Losing time to be stocking forage fish in the spring.

2. Or would it be feasible to get some hydrated lime, blast the pH thru the roof killing everything and start over now while I have time. If how much hydrated lime would it take?

3. Or is the bucket stocking fixable?
So what do you guys think about my situation, any other option?

Tim, 9 acres nuked with hydrated lime is feasible, but a WHOLE lot more expensive than an electro survey, at full pool.

NORMALLY, the lake would be drained as low as possible for 2 reasons.

First, to reduce the volume of water to a minimum for ease and effectiveness of Hydrated lime application (and lowest cost)

Second, to concentrate the live, then dead fish into a small area for removal by seining when live, and seine/dipnets when dead.

IF you would rather have your new fishery stocked as you like it, I would still lower the lake as much as possible and then nuke it. 9 acres of water will be very hard to nuke quickly enough and at a concentration to be certain nothing survived.

Tim, another, possibly huge benefit to lowering the lake and starting over if needed, would be the ability to bring in a slinger truck to spread AG lime really well on the bottom.

I'm not sure about draining the pond, never done one before. Since it was a sand quarry, it is filled from either from ground water or a spring below the water line. All the aerial photos I found seem to show a constant water level. It has higher ground around it and there is no drain/overflow pipe, no lower ground without going over the hill first. I would have to pump it out with a trash pump to a creek 500 feet +/- away from the deep spot. And I don't know how quickly it would try to refill. Is it feasible to just lower it? Would a 3" trash pump do the job and how long would it take? How long before a lime truck can get in it?

Trash pump on 9 acre lake? I think you'd need to construct some siphons to move that volume of water. Thankfully they are easy and relatively cheap to build.

Just reading some stuff on siphons now. I like it, just set it and forget it for a while.

You could make a series of 4" siphons, not much material cost. That's how I'll drain my ponds from now on after dealing with trash pumps the last several years - no more refueling.

For the siphons to work though (to fully drain it) you need lower ground to siphon to than what the lower pond level is. Might be tough in a quarry hole.

Kind of depends on how much money you are willing to invest. But one quicker solution is find a large industrial pump like would have been used in the mine to keep it dry. Big Diesel engine and six or eight inch centrifugal pump. Or a farmer that you could hire with a tractor and pto irrigation pump.

Then you could get it pumped down within a day. Three inch trash pump likely would be at it the better part of a week for 9 acres. Siphon would be great if you can find low enough surrounding area to siphon to. Or even if you could get it half way siphoned down, then trash pump.

Just some different ideas you can entertain.

Edit: If it is ground source water, a 3" pump might do no more than take out what is running in at the bottom.

The unasked question is what kind of a fishery do you want to have in 3-5 years?

If you want a BG/LMB fishery, then unless there are lots of common carp, and some flathead catfish in there, I'd not worry too much about it.

Regarding draining.

It all depends on how fast the water is coming in, and how many gallons of water you need to get out. (i.e. how deep it is and how steep the sides are)

One acre of water, one foot deep is 325,851 gallons. A 3" pump moves around 16,000 GPH. That's 380,000 gallons per day. So, without any more water coming into your pond, it will take 9 days to drop it 12".

A 6" trash pump will move 1,600 GPM, or 2,304,000 gallons per day. It would take running that pump a little over 31 hours to drop the pond 12".

Sunbelt Rentals (I know they are are around Indianapolis, but I don't know if they are near you) has trash pumps to rent up to 16" dia. I have no idea how much water those things will move, nor what the rental cost is, but I sure wouldn't want to be standing anywhere near the discharge end of one!!!

I wouldn't want to be anywhere near the intake end of one of those 16 inch monsters either. Darn good way to get one heck of a hicky I'll bet.

Hickeys would not be a problem. You would just be fish food at the outlet.

In other words, unless a person is willing to spend some significant bucks, draining is likely not a good solution. I wondered about that. 9 acres is a pretty big BOW.

So likely, he will just have to manage it as is with supplemental stocking? One advantage to small ponds I guess. Easier to start over.

You guys are just a wealth of knowledge and I do appreciate all the good advice. Yes, it would be an ominous job and I don't have a huge budget for it. So how about plan #B.
If I can get a siphon to work or rent a large pump and makes some headway, I might just drain it enough to build a boat ramp and do some pier construction. This would be a big help to me liming it, just being able to get something bigger than a Jon boat into it, like a pontoon boat to use for liming.
I'll have it electrofished as soon as the weather warms up and if my biggest problem is a lot of GSF. Whats the best way to get rid of them besides line and traps? Stock some 6-8" bass and let them eat?

Tim, I think renting a large pump, and fueling it, would cost more than the extra Hydrated Lime needed to nuke it, full.

To create a siphon, your outlet will need to be at minimum, 4' below the inlet point and 100% air-tight. 4" Sewer and drain pipe are pretty cheap, and would work great for the downhill side, but you'll need schedule 40 for the lift and crossover sections because the vacuum will suck a S&D pipe flat at about 14' of lift.

My chemical spray barge would be for that job....Here is a pic spraying Hydrated lime early this winter,,,

Thanks Rainman,
I had started inquiring with pond management company a little closer to home about bringing a liming barge in for the liming job. And then electrofishing it later this year to see where I stand. But I will definitely keep you in mind if it doesn't work out.

What is the water source for the pond? Any other ponds upstream of this pond? If there are, you could recontaminate your newly renovated pond is short order and almost make the renovation almost mute...

The common theme is that GSF will not provide enough forage for LMB. That being the case, logic would say that LMB should eventually be able to control them. Assuming the original LMB stocked are large enough to not get eaten by the GSF to begin with.

At least I hope that is the case, because I have one old pond in which that is the theory I am proceeding on.

My old pond is only 1 acre and I have trapped and caught hundreds of GSF out of it. Introduced some 12" LMB from my big pond and now the GSF thinning job will be left up to them. Nine acres would be a tall order to try and control by trapping.

Water source is bottom spring feed or ground water, No stream or creek running into it. There is a creek that borders my property, but I don't think there is anyway it can flood over to the pond. And I'm not in a flood plain.

Consider liming and then shock survey and or seine survey followed by managing to fix any population problems.

A big plus 1