Move over teehjaeh57!

~1/10 acre pond for smallmouth production. (About 90 X 40 X 28)




Limestone boulders on one side originally in place to prevent erosion.





Limestone boulders that are under water that create natural pockets to be partially filled in with landscaping size stone and cobble stone this weekend.I'll space the beds about 20 feet apart with some shallow and some deep thanks to the advise and experience of Teehjeh57.




One of three chunky smalmouth from 14 to 16 inches moved to the pond today from the main pond. More to move in the next few days. Caught on a beetlespin and carried from the main pond to this pond with a 5 gallon bucket. Good way to get all wet as they really throw the water! I'm assuming it's a female but don't know for sure. I could kick myself for not ordering a catheter tube. I do have the Finquel to anesthesize them for the procedure.



Sorry about the lack of quality in the picture but as we all know it's tough to take a picture of a fish while you're holding it!

Cool Cecil keep us informed on this project.. What's your overall goals with the fish?

I'll be happy to get a successful spawn, seine them out of the pond at about 1 1/2 inches and feed train them in a flow through tank or floating cage. Then they will either go back into the pond for continued pellet feeding, stay in a floating cage, or go into an RAS for the winter of the ones I don't sell IF I have extra ones. I'd like to add more to the big pond to control the bluegills. They're doing a good job right now but I need to add another age class and size to keep the smaller bluegill in check. I think I'm half way successful keeping the bluegill numbers down due to the high amount of smb I planted and low number of reproduced bluegills caught and observed. I'm sure the large population of large female perch has some effect on the bluegill fry too.

I planted 200 in a .62 acre pond - a very high density of SMB although they are feed trained and do feed on pellets every day.

I should be able to remove the smallies from the production pond with live bait once the spawn is over. I've never seen a smallie that could resist a live crawler dangling in front of it.

Are you planning on selling any, or is the testing just too big a pain to make it worth it?

Awesome Cecil - that mama or papa is a horse. Beautiful...and your spawning structure sure looks great to me.

Catching adults out is easy with jig and crawler or a AM 600 pellet fly. How many are you moving? I moved 14 this year so far.

I am excited for your project...please include more details on your beds and everything else. I'm on the edge of my seat!

If I sell any they will have to be in excess of what I need. And there's no guarantee I will be successful. And even then it will be most likely intrastate as I would have to sacrifice 60 for VHS testing and it's a fee of $300.00 for that testing. If the state finds a vet that is willing to take samples vs. the state vet that presently does it at no charge, the cost would probably double.

I suppose if I produced a few thousand I would be tempted to get the testing done and sell interstate but I'm not sure if that will happen in such a small pond.

As I am likewise about yours. Keep us posted!

On how many I will move? If I could sex them successfully I would like to move about 5 females and 5 males. I may hold off for a few days on moving more fish so I can determine sex better. I'm thinking females may become more obviously gravid closer to spawning.

Great work guys. Cecil a good record of what you do wrt the SMB pond would be of immense value to a lot of us !!

Update:

As of May 20th apparently at least some of my smallies have been doing the horizontal mambo (or in the case of fish the side by side mambo.)

Today I observed at least a few hundred to several hundred (perhaps a few thousand) black fry on the side of the pond with all the stone and the beds I set up. If you look carefully you can see the black fry. I tried to collect some in my 1/8 inch net and the mesh was too large. I'm aware that toad tadpoles are similar in appearance but these are definitely fish as they don't have the bulbous head and they swim differently than tadpoles.



I also caught and removed 12 out of the 13 broodfish out of the pond as it seemed at least some were interested in eating them. Or perhaps there were still some fathead minnows left?

Hopefully I didn't jump the gun and prevent some from spawning that were still in the act or just beginning to.

Nice looking rock habitat for smallies in that pond, Cecil, regardless of erosion prevention! Ha!

Cecil it looks like you got alot of grass to mow.. What are you using.. Just wondering lol

Cecil,

If you go to a pool supply department or store, you can find a very soft fine-mesh net like this, with a telescoping handle, for about $15. They work great for small tadpoles and fry.




The one we are currently using is about 18 inches in diameter, and at least 12-15 inches deep.

Ken

Ken,

I forgot I actually have a couple of those that are actually used for aquariums I could have mounted to a long pole.

I was only going to collect a few for close up pics, but I think I'll leave them alone for now. Once they get up to an inch and a half or so I'm going to seine them out of the pond and feed train them in a flow through tank.

What am I using? My soon to be 76 year old dad! He and my mom live on my property in the summer when they aren't in Florida (there's an apartment above my garage). He bought a brand new John Deer mower recently just so he can cut it. It was no cost to me. I have awesome parents!

I'll have to take a look at the model if you're interested. At least I convinced him to get it at an actual dealer vs. one of those discount stores.

Nicely done Cecil! Congrats!

For a noble gamefish the smallmouth fry sure are stupid! Not only are they staying near the surface, and don't scatter at my shadow they stick out like a sore thumb being jet black in color! The heron defense measures go in place first thing tomorrow!

CB1 consider for several (10-20) of those fry what Catmandoo is doing with his LMB fry in an aquarium. Feed training at about 3/4 of an inch. They may take to feed fairly easily at this size. As the fry get a little larger they won't be quite so 'stupid'. However if they are never chased they may stay fairly "friendly".
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=19634&Number=293202#Post293202

Bill I do plan on seining them out and putting them into a flow through circular tank at pond side when they reach an inch and a half. Right now they are so small they can go right through my smallest mesh seine.

Looks pretty cool Cecil!

Cecil those black dots are cool. I sure hope things turn out well.

Thank you for the kind words gentlemen. If it works out but if things don't work out as planned I can always try something a little different next year.

I do know the cage spawning of yellow perch works really well and it's nice to just remove the cage and broodfish when they are done spawning. I'm thinking I could do it with bluegill some year also if I had some containers of gravel. Could work for 1 male smallmouth and several females too.

Cecil, check your pm's. You got one (at least one that is!)

I replied.

Update:

Smallmouth are a little bigger at about a half to 3/4's inch since my late report and are constantly moving looking for zooplankton. Some have fecal casts hanging from their anuses which means they are finding something to eat. I've also set up a light at night to concentrate zooplankton and many are milling around under the light. I'm waiting on an order of Aquamax 5DO 00 (starter feed) to see if I can get them interested before I remove them at 1 1/2 inches for intense feed training. I'm going to try a belt feeder under the light just like I do to feed train yellow perch.


There is also some fathead minnow reproduction. Some fatheads survived from the ones I planted to feed the broodstock and obviously reproduced.

The water began gin clear as of yesterday due to the continued expansion and growth of the Chara. I'm in the process of raking it out and hopefully this will allow a phytoplankton bloom to come back. I also stirred up the bottom by raking and along with the diffuser should bring up nutrients into the water column to feed the phytoplankton.

Here's one of two loads of Chara I removed:



Here's the Chara close up:



I will continue to remove as much Chara as i can from this small 1/10th acre pond manually. Copper based herbicides have no effect on established Chara in my ponds (due to the hardness of the water). Even if they did the amount I have now would be dangerous to kill even in sections. I think I've removed less than a 1/5th in my first two hours. Two trailer loads was probably about 500 lbs. wet weight.

Next year I will drain and dry the pond about 2 to 3 weeks before I fill it back up. Hopefully this will allow a bloom before the Chara gets the upper hand. I may consider putting Cutrine Plus granular on the bottom upon filling as a preemptive measure?

Thoughts? Suggestions?

P.S.: Just looking at the picture of Chara brings the skunky oder to mind! (It's also called skunk weed).

Thanks for the update.

What about some brine shrimp or krill ?

In your situation manual removal is best IMO if you can do the work as it removes the excess nutrients. Plus you can control the amount removed vs. killing it all and leaving it to decay. A couple cheap tarps or plastic covering all or part the bottom would help.

Eric,

Actually I'm not sure tarps or covering the bottom would help much with Chara from my experience as it's an algae and is not rooted. I've seen it grow right over the top of rock.

Krill and brine shrimp work but I've had pretty good luck with the Aquamax starter feed with bluegills and yellow perch. I don't see why it shouldn't work with the smallmouth.

His pond banks are almost vertical and it would be difficult to hold tarps on the sides. Gasses will also accumulate under the tarps and cause problems - been there done that. Smallies should train easily to the fry starter. Timing will be important. Catmandoo had 1" LMB eating ground pellets so smallies should also take well to feed. My experience is they at all sizes up to 8" 'go to feed' a lot easier than LMB.

Not very well stated (A couple cheap tarps or plastic covering all or part the bottom would help ) – try this - Physical barriers are also used to eliminate plants by shading the bottom. These work well for swimming areas, docks, etc. but must be kept clean of any buildup of sediment and debris.

http://aquaplant.tamu.edu/management-options/muskgrass/

Thanks for the information and link Eric. Always appreciated.

I got the fry starter today. $46.00. Fortunately it goes a long ways. I will set up the belt feeders under the lights tonight and see what happens. I sprinkled it around to see if they were at least remotely interested. It's startled them when I threw it over them, but some seemed to want to check it out at least. I do notice some are chasing water striders which are too big for them to eat. Typical predator fish. LOL

Amazingly just removing some of the Chara and bringing up bottom sediment into the water column along with higher temps has created a rapid algae bloom. I knew it would from past experience.

I will be removing more Chara this evening. The good thing is I won't be able to get it all but that will act as a safeguard against to much of an algae bloom and a crash. That according to a fish farmer I really respect, Bill Lynch, a retired extension agent and perch farmer extraordinaire. He says some macrophytes are not a bad thing even in a hatchery pond for that reason. Makes sense to me.

Cecil, I'm not sure of your exact set up. However, covers or partial covers on feed training containers usually improves the percent of SMB (or LMB) that train to the prepared diet.

They are the covered belt feeders with the German clocks. Catmandoo (Ken) actually gave me one so I now have two. I'm having problems with one of them but should be able to fix it.

Is this what you are referring to?

I think that Dr. Dave is referring to covering your tanks that the SMB are being feed trained in.

BTW: Nice smallies!, and great to hear from Dr. Dave !!!

Right, JKB. Whatever container the fish are in, we got higher training percentages to the prepared diets when tanks were mostly or at least partially covered (lid).

I think the container they are in is a 1/10 ac pond........

O.K. now I understand! Yes as Scott (esshup) said they are in the pond now and I will not seine them out to put in tanks for feed training until they are 1.5 inches in length. However in the mean time I want to see if I can train them off the piers with belt feeders and a night light. Might as well give it a try.

I do plan on covering at least part of the tanks with shade cloth unless I bring them inside.

In case you're mistaken the pic was taken off the Internet and are not my smallies. It was faster to get a pic of a belt feeder off the Internet vs. wading through my extensive photobucket account.

Here are smallmouth (orangish when illuminated) and a few fatheads under the light and belt feeder tonight. I think most are after zooplankton but I'm pretty sure I saw some smallmouth already ingesting starter powder. If not perhaps they may learn from the fatheads, which take to artificial feed quite rapidly?



On another note I thought I saw a couple of yellow perch in this pond after looking at the photo below. If that's the case I may have a hole bored through by five start moles once again. The pond adjacent to the smallmouth hatchery pond is for yellow perch and bluegill production.

What do you think? Could the one barred fish in the photo be a yellow perch? There's also another fish below it and slightly right near he bottom of the photo that seems to have the profile of a yellow perch.

OK

Yes those two in the lower left area do appear to be YP and a little larger indicating earlier hatch & slightly older fish. A little more time will tell the rest of the story. The YP will probably accept food faster than the smallies. Those few YP may grow optimally without cohort competition. And the FHM will probably help teach the others to feed train; a common occurrance since kleptoparasitism commonly occurs in numerous fish species. As you know monkey see - monkey do type of thing.

I agree with Bill, they look like YOY YP to me too. Cecil, was the pond completely drained, killed and filled with well water? No way could a pair of YP gotten into the pond earlier in the year?

No, no way anything was left after I drained and limed the pond.

Funny I saw one of those fish today again in daylight. Seems to have too many bars for a perch. I'm wondering if some kind of killifish or small perch related species was mixed in with the fatheads i planted with the broodfish and spawned.

I have a more pressing problem! I saw a broodsize smallmouth in the pond today. I need to get him or her out of the pond pronto. I thought I got them all out...

Edit:

Now I'm not so sure it was a smallmouth. I may have been a large bullfrog shooting away under water. Clarity was off so...

Methinks Bill has the right idea, # of fish in = # of fish out.

Many more smallies under the light tonight. If I can swing it I will order another belt feeder to put on the pier on the other end of the 1/10 acre pond. But first I will put the word out for a used one or two on a couple of aquaculture list serves. That's how I got a 200 foot X 8 foot deep seine for $50.00.

My other belt feeder is on the perch/bluegill production pond. I feel I may be missing some fish on the other end of the pond.

Didn't observe any fish that looked like YP tonight under the light, but I did see some obvious fatheads that took some of the feed off the surface.

On a funny note I observed both a small leech and a small moth that were totally destroyed by a two or three smallies.

Bill knows I'm an idiot when it comes to record keeping. I knew how many broodfish I put in the pond the first time, but put a few more in later, and can't remember the exact number!

Cecil, LMK the price of the belt feeder and when you will be ordering. I might piggy back on your order for one. I've had a number of times when I could use one............

I think it's time for a whole nightcrawler on a hook for the remaining SMB. Larger than what the YOY would chase after. Easier now to catch than when the bait stealers get large enough to feel that they can take on a whole nightcrawler!

I think hitchikers in the FHM vs. tunnel from a mole for the non-SMB YOY.

Already tried the nightcrawler on a hook a week ago for several hours and no takers. If I wasn't so lazy I'd go out right now and sink it under the light.

I will try again tomorrow.

Not 100 percent sure there is a smallmouth left.

One fish (or even 2) in a pond no matter how small will be hard to catch unless they were coming to food on a consistent basis.

Very true!

I have a good hatch in my main pond now too, at least in one near shore area. I scooped up a few with an aquarium dip net attached to long piece of PVC. Here are 30 from my first attempt.




I moved at least double that in my second attempt. They seem to have hatched later than my hatchery pond, and are at least 1/2 as small probably a third at this point. I first observed them about 3 days ago.

I figure the more I can move to the hatchery pond the more I will have at harvest -- to a point.


If my seine mesh was fine enough I'm confident I could seine out several hundred.

Here's a close up of one of the ones I moved. I will try and get another picture of one of the smallmouth that are much larger in the hatchery pond and some are definitely taking artifical feed as it sinks under the light and in daylight -- some even from the top.

I apologize for the foam dust from carving fish bodies that looks like nasty dust. (This was taken in my taxidermy work area) Once I noticed and removed it -- to take more pictures -- the battery in my camera died!

They do have caudal fins btw. They are extremely transparent and difficult to see at this point.




Edit: On a walk back to the two hatchery ponds I noticed a broodstock smalmouth I missed! I got him out with a nitecrawler. I believe at most there is one left and will keep any eye out for him or her.

Love to see those black dots. A pic of one swimming in a quart jar works well.

I will have to hold off for a picture of one of the larger ones as I need to find a battery for the camera. I'm sure there's one here but the wife is in Germany for a month with some of her students so I'll have to wait to ask her where! She's techno geek of the family.

So, with the late spawn in the main pond, do you think the fish that were transplanted held off and the spawning behavior that was seen is actually them trying to pull off a spawn?

Could be. Keep a look out for black fry in Fritz's pond. Make sure you get a good count as I'll be charging extra for them! Just kidding of course!

I'd like to ask Cody if he knows how old the fish in the above picture is, and if that bulging abdomen is still it's yolk sack. Considering they just appeared about three days ago I'm thinking they can't be more than a week old so spawning couldn't have been that long ago. But the again Cody would know how long they stay on the nest until they scatter and I could be way off on this.

I've only observed one probable nest in the big pond and the male that apparently made the nest was able to find some stone and gravel. Perhaps they held off until they could find suitable substrate? I've had females that seemed to be absorbing their egg die, and was told by someone at BPS it's a probably they deal with on female smallmouth.

Hopefully Cody can give us his expertise on the subject.

Bill are you there?


BTW I have moved close to 200 of the above to the hatchery pond now. 30 the first trip, about 80 the seond, and 80 the third. Unless they scatter soon I think I can scoop up that many more and will try. Cha Ching! $$$

On another note Scott, in the future I may be able to collect all the spawn I need from the big pond by placing a screen around the nest once I observe fry as in Piper's textbook and as per Cody's advice. Then move them to the hatchery pond and not deal with broodfish.

This could be more easily done in the big pond as I can set up beds on more flat bottom. Another advantage is a higher success rate by filling and fertilizing the fry pond at the latest possible time ensuring temps more conducive to phytoplankton.

Scott,

I got this off of Michigan's DNR site:

The eggs, which are larger than those of the largemouth bass, hatch in 2 to 3 days. Then the newly hatched light-colored fry drop down into the bottom of the gravel nest for three or more days.

By the time the fry work their way out of the gravel on the ninth or tenth day, they are very dark in color. Under the watchful eye of the male, they swim in a dense dark cloud over the nest for a few days, then begin to disperse.

http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,1607,7-153-10364_18958-45689--,00.html

If my math is right the above may have hatched as much as 3 weeks ago?

You said you saw what appeared to spawning activity on Fritz's pond at least a week ago?

Middle of last week he saw SMB chasing other fish off of the gravel areas. The RES are bedding on the remaining areas. I'll look in the pond tomorrow since I'll be there.

Scott,

I think it's entirely possible they were still spawning. As we all know not all fish of the same species spawn entirely at once. If they'd probably go extinct just like 99 percent of the others species on this planet have.

Now if there was a female that was still fecund vs. just a male on a bed may be another question.

Cecil, I didn't make it to the pond to look today, even tho I was less than 100' from it. An easy day turned into the day from hell. Ever try to get a trailer tire back seated on the rim and inflated when there's about 20,000# of wood in the trailer (only half loaded) and you don't have tools or a jack that is strong enough to lift the trailer without unloading it? Then, once it's seated and inflated, you hear air hissing out and realize that it went flat because a good sized nail went thru the tread....

Uncouple trailer, drive truck to nearest town to get a plug kit, etc., etc. An 8 hr day turned into a 17 hr day.......

I haven't done that yet Scot but I've been in some dousies!