Hi Guys, Spent the last two hours on here reading about Curly leaf.
Question: is there any harm in cutting curly leaf off at the bottom with one of those commercially available big "V" shaped cutting tools?
I have a 1 1/2 acre NW MO pond that I have been battling Curly leaf in now for several years. GC have not helped. Dyed it this Spring.. no help. Have had mild success with chemical treatments, but looking for a non-chemical solution.
Really just looking for some help right now to make the pond somewhat fishable.
Your thoughts please.
Do you have papershell crayfish?
how did the dye not work? were the plants already established before you put the dye in the water?
you can remove curly leaf mechanically but it'll keep growing and spreading until the water reaches the die off temperature. Cutting can help to spread the turions
How much of your pond is holding curly leaf? It is a food source for crawfish and turtles.
I usually just let mine go as it doesn't live in more than 20% of the pond
Appear to have no crayfish at all.
appears that 90% of pond is covered... even in water that is 12 to 15 ft deep.
Not sure why dye did not work... mixed it all through the pond in early April. Dye seemed to dissipate within 3 weeks.
I mentioned the papershell because my CLP is much reduced over the years since adding them. Could just be a coincidence though. Have not even seen any of the papershell, but I have not really been looking. The pond has had burrowing crayfish from the beginning.
Want to pass on that a previously flourishing population of curly leaf pondweed is nowhere to be seen several years after adding the papershell crayfish to the 1 acre pond. Other factors could explain this like the emergent plants and waterlilies, but the crayfish seem like the most likely reason. When it cools off this fall, I need to see how big the SMB have grown. Did not fish in this pond at all last year but a neighbor caught a nice YP.
Hi,
I have a one acre pond completely filled with curly leaf. It is 16ft deep everywhere. I also tried dye which made the water very blue for months, with absolutely no effect on the weeds. Currently, I use a weed razor once the weeds ready the surface around June. I am in a more northern area, so my curly leaf seems to have a cycle of dying off around late July, meaning it's only really bad for a couple months. Regardless, I cut using the weed razor by attaching it to a long rope, sending someone out in a small boat, dropping it down and letting it sink, and then someone on the shore pulls it in. The weeds then float to the surface and it takes a while to collect them all using a regular metal rake or by hand in a large row boat. In the area I cut heavily last year, the weeds grew back less dense than in the other, less cut areas. By now, the weeds have sunk down and are not visible from the edges of the pond. They will start to regrow when the ice melts in March. I've never tried any chemical methods of control, as they are hard to find legally around here.
Cutting is really time heavy, but really does seem to work, although I can't say if it spreads it or not. Doesn't seem to make it worse for my pond though.
How do crayfish help reduce the weeds? I have never heard of that in my area.
By eating them, but I had no luck until I got papershells which are pond dwellers as opposed to stream dwellers. They need cover though so they can survive predation and raise a lot of young. I built a rip-rap jetty before getting mine.
They can really eat that many weeds? I pulled out maybe 500lbs of curly leaf and only raked half the pond. Do you think they would work in that type of situation?
I cannot speculate on how they would work for you, but given rocky cover, they cannot hurt. I have SMB, so that is why I wanted them. It took me several years as well.
Hi,
That's really interesting. I do have some crayfish, not sure what type, that I see from time to time. Although, this year, I haven't seen any. I may set a trap tomorrow and see what happens. It's hard to imagine tiny crayfish eating hundreds or thousands of pounds of weeds. Certainly sounds great though.
I had existing burrowing crayfish as well and they did not control the curly leaf pondweed. I think it took 3 years for mine to get controlled. I think they start feeding as the plants emerge, so they don't need to eat thousands of pounds of foliage. I also have water lilies and emergent plants and they are doing fine. Maybe something else controlled the pondweed, but it did coincide with the papershells.
I spent $1300 on small plants for transplanting to the pond it's first spring. I also added around 1200 baby crayfish shortly after that. And I can say the crawfish completely denuded the pond. I saw it happen! I had several desirable types of plants and was hoping to have them take up space so less likely plants did not. I did not have curly leaf in the mix and if I was to add that many craws today with matue plants I could not say they would rid the pond of all the APW and Bushy Pondweed I have now.
I added just 100 papershells after the desirable plants and curly leaf pondweed were established. I also have YP and SMB in the pond. Maybe I just got lucky with the balance?
Hi,
"I think they start feeding as the plants emerge, so they don't need to eat thousands of pounds of foliage." That makes perfect sense. I will definitely look into getting them in my area. Where did you purchase yours?