Looking towards the island from the feeder:


Looking North:


Random pics:







Those floating squares of foam were placed in about 6" of water when the pond was down, and they're tied to a brick with 2' of rope. The brick WAS put on dry land.....

Now all I need is for Rainman to brng the Blues. Oh Rex, calling Rainman!!!!

Working hard on it esshup!!!

Great looking place Scott!

Very nice, Esshup. That tree on the island (or at the landlubber shoreline...?) is hangin' in there...kinda surprising, unless it's cypress or similar.

Great looking pond, Scott. What are the floating foam squares for? Spawning structure for forage fish, or something else? That's a heck of a water gain if those things were dry when you placed them! Congrats!

Yep, it was a heck of a water gain. I was fully expecting to go thru the summer having to run the well to keep a decent amount of water in the pond.

Brettski, depending on what tree you are referring to, it's either a Pin Oak (first pic, the closest tree that is on the right) or a Weeping Willow (first pic, tree further away on the left, which is on the island). Both like wet feet. If everything wasn't leafed out, you could see the 12"+ of water that is sitting in the woods. The mosquitoes are just starting to hatch, and get nasty. Farley's is coming to the area in <2 weeks, and I was thinking of buying a couple #'s of FHM to toss in the woods just to try and combat the mosquito problem that we'll have.

The BG just started making beds yesterday afternoon. I'll check water temp this evening.

The floating squares were very close to shore; I was hoping to give the FHM something to spawn on.

Are you typically below full pool? How long has it been since you had this much water?

Wow, looking good!

Typically, yes. Last full pool was March/April last year. The pond is a groundwater pond, subject to the water levels in the ground. It's dug in sandy soil, without enough good clay when renovated to properly pack a liner. So, it's subject to the whims of the season. It will typically vary from the 1 3/4+ acre that it is now, to roughly 1 ac in late Fall/Winter. The water table usually is at 10' depth, but for some reason the pond level drops down to 4' or so below full pool and stays there by the Fall.

A 25-28 gpm well will only raise the level of the pond a couple of inches a week if run 24/7 once the water drops. There are plans to drop a dedicated well for the pond that would flow around 75 gpm, but I need to get the $$ in the bank first.

Can't wait to see it when I come down there to meet Rex. Hoping we are still on for that!

Interesting, Scott. Sorry to hear about your being so subject to environmental conditions - it's got to be frustrating seeing it at the low levels and knowing what it's capable of being. Still, beautiful layout and really nice looking right now!

Coach: Yep, still on, it just depends on when Rex will schedule a delivery.

Todd, I had an idea when I renovated the pond that this would be an ongoing problem, so I dug the pond down to 22' depth to compensate for the water loss. Good thing I did, Hurricane Ike came thru right after we were done and before I could get soil erosion established. I still have 14'-15' of water when it's down, and now I'm guessing the deepest spot is 17'-20' deep.

In my quick walk around today, I noticed what looked like clouds forming a couple of feet below the water surface. I tried taking pics, but they don't show up. I've seen it before, and I believe it's a plankton bloom starting. The BG are muddying the water on most of the South shore, making spawning beds, and there are a few RES in even shallower water doing the same thing. I also saw one school of 1/4" or so long baby LMB that was about 18" in diameter. I couldn't see pappa tho.

Eric, Dave or anybody else, providing the weather doesn't turn sour and drive the BG/RES off of the beds, how long should it be until the BG lay eggs and successfully hatch? The males just started nest building yesterday.

Reason for asking, is that they are in shallow water, and last year I believe the pond level dropped before the eggs hatched. I saw very little recruitment from last year. This year there is more water, later in the year. If necessary I can pump water into the pond from the neighbors pond and from the well to keep the level up until they finish spawning. Full moon is right around the corner.

The geese are another matter. There are 3 families with babies that want to call the pond home and I'm chasing them off the pond every day. At first they just swam out into the pond, but once I started slinging lead close to them, they got the idea, left the pond and went into the flooded woods. One family and the goslings I could live with, but not 30+!

I remember now that you dug your pond really deep - good planning for sure.

I know what you mean with the geese! We had a nesting pair that was really cool for the kids, and Tammy and me also, to watch. We got pretty attached to them. But, then they hatched and had 10, yes 10, goslings! To make matters worse, they were joined by another pair that had 4 of its own so we now have 14 goslings and 4 adults. We love it, other than the fact that the area all around the pond looks like a doggone goose poop factory, including all the areas where we hang out, fish, swim, do fires, etc. I'm getting awfully tired of nature's little wonders at this point!

An interesting thing that I've never seen before is that these two mating pairs seems to share parenting responsibility as it's totally common to see two of them with all of the goslings while the other pair goes for a swim or food foraging. When we spend a full day at the farm, we'll see them trade off. It's actually been pretty interesting to watch, but, like I said, the poop is getting really annoying and is probably why I have so much FA in the pond. I just don't want to chase them off yet with the young 'uns that have, so far, totally avoided predation.

Scott great looking pond, having it that deep is a real fish saver. When you get a dedicated well for it that should really help trout survivability.

When we renovated the pond, we hit a horizontal layer of clay mixed with gravel at 10'-11' and there was a lot of water running into the pond area from right above that layer. Once we dug down deeper, we hit another layer like that one with water as well. We had to pump with a 15,000 gph trash pump for 10 to 12 hrs before digging that day, and had to keep the pump running while digging too.

Not enough clay to use for a liner tho darn it! I'm going to use that same trash pump to transfer water from the surrounding area into the pond once the water starts to drop in the pond.

Congratulations! It's beautiful!

Thanks. I'm going to try and keep it pretty as long as I can, but unless Mother Nature wants to help in a big way, I'll slowly lose the battle towards the Fall.

Scott, I think in 3 or 4 days. But I don't know your area.

Scot,

Did you ever set up a flap gate valve or something to allow water in but not out?

We got a ton of rain here too a couple of days ago. Auburn, Indiana got 5.5 inches!

My bluegills started bedding too. I need to set back up my stakes and mono line in the big pond to keep the heron off of them though. I've already done it in the bg production pond. As we all know when the males are on the beds they are very vunerable.

In my mostly female bluegill pond I had some bgs males guarding nests so I caught and moved 15 males to the big pond off of those beds in just 20 minutes. It wasn't so easy to tell the difference on some of them earlier this year so rather than put potential females in the male only pond I put them in this pond. Now it's easy. The males are dark and have the distinctive black scale tips on the nape and have orange breasts. The females are packed with eggs and much lighter.

I'm going to build a second pier to put a second belt feeder on for the perch production pond sometime this week. I want to set up a light on the other end of the pond, as there are a lot of fry on the other end of the pond that aren't coming to the present light. Last time I produced my own perch I had big size descrepancy. My theory is the smaller ones may not have fed under the feeder and light, at least at first.

It's weird. The Redear are bedding in shallow water (less than a foot deep), and the BG are out past them in deeper water.

Yep, I've got the culvert all rigged up. Right now the water is static, not moving in or out. I'll close off the culvert on Wed and get the pump ready to go. I haven't seen the Heron in a week or so, I think the neighbor might have scared it off permanently.

Did you figure out what's wrong with the other belt feeder?

your pond looks great! loved seeing the pictures

I haven't had time to look at it but I'll bet the surface the belt lays on is greasy.

That's a beautiful pond ya got there esshup!

Thanks Weissguy!

Now to get my hands on some Tilapia to help with the FA. Where's Waldo (Rex) when you need him?

Beautiful Scott - thanks for sharing. Is that ultra water clarity I'm seeing or a reflection on the water?

The first picture under Random Pics with the green near shore - the green disappears at the old high water mark, in that pic that is about 18" deep. Clarity is (well was) high, a bloom started on Monday and visibility is now about 30" and getting less every day.

The water that flowed into the pond was really dark with tannins from the leaves on the forest floor. I pumped about 1" of water into the pond today from the neighbor's land, any more and it'll just go out of my pond. I need to conserve that water 'till the BG finish spawning. The RES are in VERY shallow water, and I want them to pull off a spawn this year. As of this afternoon, between the BG and the RES I only see about 75 beds. FA is getting worse, water temp in 1' of water was 83° today, 3'-4' deep it was 77°. I'll check tomorrow in deeper water, I think I have 8' or so on the probe. The trout didn't feed at all this evening except for one RBT. I wasn't around for the A.M. feeding.

Sounds like a business opportunity Scot! All you need is a building and some tanks! Wish I had the capital. I think I could make it a go.

I've often thought that in our area someone could set up some tanks in a building to overwinter and produce tilapia and also sell triploid grass carp that are easily purchased from Malone and Sons. One for FA algae and one for certain macrophytes. It's the ultimate product as the customer would have to keep buying them. Push them as an alternative to herbicides and advertise good, and you'd probably be busy all spring and summer in our area.

I doubt that it'd be that simple. But, I have the same problem, no building! I'm sure Rex will chime in here sooner or later.

Sure it would! According to the text Small Scale Aquaculture they are some of the easiest fish to raise and you can produced thousands in just an aquarium. I'm pretty much on top of the RAS technology now and could build everything myself. Just need a building!

Well, the building wouldn't be a problem, keeping it heated on the other hand.......

Greenhouse facing south in the winter!