Built this out of some old 4 wheeler ramps I found in our scrap pile at the shop. Its really ugly but does a great job pulling in the FA. Its a little over 5' wide so it gets a tad heavy. Its a pretty good workout also...lol. I have 20 dollars in it. Rope and pool noodles.









The battlefield.



Oh and thanks Dr Luke for pointing me towards the imgur mobile page. works great!

The pond pic was the day we stocked 30# of tilapia from Rex. I will try to get some pics of what they have done so far. They are not messing with the mats..which is good, I can get those. They are hammering the submerged FA on the levee right now. Some in the shallows, but huge clearing on the levee. My water is SUPER clear, never had a bloom...but working towards it.

Cool rake

Wow that is some large blankets of FA

Is the water shallow that far out?

Chems/Tilapia/Rake = all pieces of this puzzle

lol, no that is the deep end actually. We live on a hill, so wind blows most of the time. It was blowing out of the south that day so it was congregated on the levee. Its much easier raking when its like that. I raked a bunch on the day I took that picture. It got way ahead of me. Hope to get some pics of the bottom that the tilapia have cleared today. Really amazing how clean the spots are. They are just as clean as if fish had cleared them to spawn, but I never find beds where the clear spots are...and the spots are not circular...actually not any shape at all. They are very large also. Not a drop in the spots. You can actually see pebbles of gravel and the colors of the gravel. I haven't seen that in a long time.

I'm eyeing some vegetation in a couple other ponds in the area to put in also. Hopefully to take up some of the phosphorus. Between the tilapia binding it up and eating...introducing a plant of some sort that is NOT FA...as it is really the only plant I have...and raking, maybe I can fish something besides top water in the clear spots by the end of the summer...lol.

couple more pictures of the pond and FA





That is looking south then south west towards the house. That is the levee I'm standing on. Shallowest towards the southern most tip. The floating DIY Remington Feeder in the background. As you can see, little to no plant life. Except for FA. Will try to get pics of the plant I'm talking about and post to verify what it is. Would like to get it going in the shallows.

Nice job on the rake. I had FA almost that bad on my main pond a couple years ago. Not quite but almost.

The trick I have found is getting started controlling it early.

The tilapia are going to like the fresh fast growing stuff. Imagine if you were at a salad bar. Would you go for the fresh lettuce just put out, or stuff that had been there for a week all wilted and dead looking? The fresh green stuff on the bottom is the actively growing stuff with the nutrients for the fish. The floating mats are the dead/dying stuff the fish likely would only eat if they had nothing else to choose from.