Good morning, First post here. I help manage a property in Cisco TX with a 4 acre lake. The dam broke a few years back but has been repaired and holds water well. We were surprised to find last year that there are LMB in it. Even more so we were surprised at how many. I’ve caught 30 in a day. Some were very large, most were young and none looked to be stunted.
Before we stock with baitfish we need to correct the FA issue we have. The water clarity is at least 4ft of visibility. I know that is bad and we likely need to fertilize. There’s very little vegetation in the lake currently.
I am curious on what is recommended for fertilizing in this area and how to apply it? Also is March too soon? Should I start with a water sample? Can I get those on Amazon?
I think that is step 1. I think we also need to start pulling a lot of the mid sized bass out to reduce the population when we stock.
I’m trying to get started on this here in the next month or two so thanks in advance for the help!
Welcome to PB. First you need to establish a baseline to work from by getting soil samples and water analysis. If you have clear water and stunted fish you likely have a limiting water factor (low alkalinity , no P and or low N). Soil and water sample analysis will answer that question. Taking out some stunted fish will help somewhat.
What are goals for the lake?
See link below about basic fertilization as a tool. Also take a look at the archive - headings for basic info.
The goals are to have a place to take the kids and fish and have some that can make it a challenge. Just being realistic, we’re not trying to spend a mint on it and only have so many weekend to dedicate to this sort of thing so a balanced population with good fishing for years to come is the goal.
None of the fish are stunted, I’ve had local fisheries look st the pics and they say they all look healthy but that we need some bluegill for continued quality.
I have pulled two water samples that I will be sending to TAMU later this week. My neighbor has a pond and loaned me his home test kit. The prelim results show pH at 7.6, Nitrite at 0 ppm and Nitrate at 0 ppm. This seems good but would these readings differ because it is winter?
One thing i did note was that the water clarity was much lower than noted last summer. I did not do a full on secchi disk test (1 because I don't have on and 2 because it was 25 degrees). Would this too differ from winter to summer?
Should I take these results and assume that if the TAMU test is similar that the water is directionally good?