My main pond and my former trout pond are ice free as of today March 10. I have two production ponds that still have ice but I doubt it will last another day. It's refreshing to see open water again@

Anyone else?

Suhweet Cecil! Glad to hear you have open water...no 5 lb Brookie morts waiting for you I hope

You had more ice on your pond than I did, and it left sooner. Probably 70% of my pond is still ice covered, but I'll bet it goes when the rain hits tomorrow.

Actually I'm out of the trout business for a while and my supplier tested positive for a virus anyway. If I raise trout again it will probably be in an RAS and they will be triploids.

Any news on the re-test?

I haven't heard anything. I'm a little confused about that anyway. In the same conversation John said he wasn't going to pay for a retest, and he was going to retest. I should have cleared that up but we started talking about other things.

Maybe you should call him?

I should. At least let him know how his babies are doing!

Cecil, where are all the male brook trout you were raising? Did you give up on them or you are just going to sell them off and be done with trout for a while?

Cecil-My ice is SW MI is only about 1/8 off and I have already seen about 10 nice HBG dead and one LMB. Last year I only had about 10 total and I am starting to get worried-this is only the second year of my pond-should I be worried or is this normal? any ideas on how much % usually dies off during winter?

Thanks,

Dave

Ice out here in central Indiana. Woke up Wednesday morning to open water. No floaters. Walked the banks and saw several big LMB pressing small BG into the shallows. Painted turtle sitting on a log. Life is good! Spring is awakening.

Finally made it out to our farm yesterday for the first time in about a month and our small pond is totally ice free. I did not see any dead fish at all, so the initial signs are encouraging. The water is a bit muddy due to all the surface runoff from snowmelt, and outflow pipe is running strong, sending water to the big pond.

The big pond is still probably 75% covered, some of it appears to be reasonably thick still, too. It's much more shaded, though, and doesn't get nearly the same amount of direct sunlight in a lot of areas that the small one gets due to steep banks and lots of trees.

Pretty cool. We're supposed to be in for some rain the next several days, so we're certainly going to have a surplus of water. The cool thing is seeing all the potential for projects designed to enhance the ponds over time. This is our first year of ownership, so each season is showing us new things. Really cool!

Man am I jealous, it'll be a month yet before my ice is out. I was out ice fishing today and still have two feet of ice!

How big is the pond?

Did you have a lot of snow on the ice?

Life is good.

I saw a beautiful poster at the dentist today with massive beds of multicolored flowers. The caption said, "Spring is the way the earth says ""Let's party!"" Or something to that effect.

Good deal!

All have been sold except for four or five. As soon as I contact a customer in Montana I'm sure they will be gone too.

Funny you ask about the trout. I thought I had killed them all with the potassium permanganate this fall, which are the ones I've sold except for about 11 that floated up just as the pond was icing over. They must have initially sank to the bottom.

Today I'm draining that pond down and I notice a large boil twice, most like a survivor or more chasing fathead minnows. It will be interesting to see how many are left in the next few days once the pond is completely drained.

Cecil:

Do you think they'd survive in the big pond, or will the water get too warm?

No because I already tried it. My first experience with trout was in the big pond quite a few years ago. They croaked in late May. Of course they may have lasted a little bit longer without the diffusers.

At least ten trout left in the trout pond I'm draining down! I had more trout than I thought! I was feeding them today. Can't see them though as the water is a very dark brown due to the weird algae bloom and or precipitate produced by the potassium permanganate. I'll post pics once I drain the pond completely down ina few days. One seems quite large judging by the boil he makes when he inhales a pellet. They all were probably feeding on feeding on fatheads into fall and winter.

WITHOUT the diffusers - meaning, preserving the thermocline? Please elucidate...

As you know the diffusers break up any thermocline and create a warmer more homogenous temperature in summer from top to bottom. Without the diffuers the trout would have lasted a little longer in the cooler deeper temps, but of course eventually those cooler depths would have run out of oxygen.

If I had a nickle for everyone that tells me trout would survive in their pond because it's deep I'd be a rich man. Very common fallacy.

Thanks C...you verified my suspicion. What about Scott's [Esshup] pond with the heavy springs...can the temp keep low enough to sustain Summer trout?

Possibly if he has enough oxygen down there. However springs are devoid of oxygen initially...

A possibility to allow the survivability of trout in the hypolimnion, if it becomes depleted of oxygen in the summer, is hypolimnetic aeration. Either low enough of a level of diffusion to add oxygen, but not break up the thermocline, or you can inject pure oxygen. In one of the AES catalogs they show a pic of a trout club that does the former. The oxygen mechanism is housed in a small shed.

Cecil:

Next time you're out this way bring your O2 meter. We can test the well water. The well screen is placed from 56' to 66' (extra screen was placed at the end of the well casing when I had the well drilled), and it's about 60 yds from the pond. The water table that we hit when renovating the pond started at 9' and continued down as far as we dug the pond.

I'm going to try and aerate the deepest part of the pond only during the coolest part of the night, hopefully that'll work. If not, then nothing is lost because they would have died anyway.

Gotta try...I can't wait to see how you do, Scott. This is invaluable information for the forum - and a cool project period.

Aside: If one wants a DO meter they had better be willing to spend $600 on the YSI, correct? Man, that's STEEP.

I know a trout farmer that claims his spring water comes out of the ground aerated. Unless he has limestone caves below him, or his water originates in Lake Huron, (He's close to the Lake Huron shore) I have my doubts. However there are sink holes in his area that they've injected dye into, and the dye made it's way to Lake Huron.

You can get them in the mid 200 range now.

Reliable brands? Does that matter? I was under the assumption YSI or nothing, for some reason. Any thoughts there Cecil?

Started this one up because my ice went out today. This is two weeks earlier than normal. I'm glad for that especially since I also found about 25 floaters. I would say half of them were 1.5 lb fish. I'm bummed. Most I ever had before was 8 floaters.

Go'in up to the pond tomorrow and I'll bet there's still some ice on the pond but probably not for long. Time to hook up the electric fence so the Otter's can dance.

Just make sure that they're not in the pond when you turn it on!!

Wow. We went from freezing and ice, to 80+ degree weather in just a few days.

Because of Easter, I came home tonight from Ye Olde Folks Home. As I drove in our nearly half-mile long driveway, the sound of the Virginia peepers over-powered my radio, even with my truck windows rolled-up.

What a beautiful sound.

We have frogs called Spring Peepers, they do the same thing, you can't here yourself think. It's cool, it's spring. However, I do not have a single frog around my fish pond, the fish eat them all! I think of it as conversion of frogs and bugs to my dinner table.

What species?