Haven't been around for a few years but I started looking at some of those porcupine fish structures for sale and it got me thinking I'd come around and see if some could give us advice on how much structure/fish habitat we should have.


Some pictures of what we did when we were doing our pond. I would assume more shallow structure would help?


Before any structure and before lined with clay. My wife is in the pond for scale if you look to the top right of the water.



Structure added.



No idea how many tons of rock we added but it was a lot.



Did about 10 block structure around the pond with old block.



Added log structures.

Welcome bk, looks like your off to a great start for sure. I dont know the % of cover toy would want. It might depend on the fish going into it also. It does look it it's pretty big so it's going to take alot.

Shallow structure is important. Unless you aerate enough to keep the water autonomous during summer, the bottom layer won't contain enough oxygen to hold fish, so structure placed there might not get used.

Also, you might consider getting some pond plants for YOY fish to hide in.

I'm curious as to how you've tied your log structures down.

I staked and wired most of mine, and weighted down another.

I like the rock you have added. I also like the log cribs but I think the cribs need some brush added to the inside of them. There is or was a thread here where a scuba diver studied fish with underwater cribs and such things. He noted that cribs held more fish if they had brush. The cribs with no brush had few if no fish around them.

I believe we're getting some oxygen from the spring that flows into the pond and after this picture was taken we have placed rocks at the inlet and outlet of the piping to help produce more oxygen. Not sure how much oxygen is in the pond or how to test.

On the small log structures we just weighted them down with rock. The large log structures we didn't weigh down so they floated around the pond for about a year until they settled down in the shallow end after getting water logged.

By the way, the pictures I posted are over 10 years old. Our pond is full and has a bunch of fish. I think we have an issue with too many predator fish because we'll notice thousands of fry and then shortly after they all seem to disappear. Last year we added 500 minnows and 500 rosy reds and they disappeared after 4 days. We did notice some of the 200 breeder shiners made it thru.

Need to figure something out to help give cover and protection to the fry.

You have a nice looking place.

Thanks RStringer. It's been so much fun you almost forget all the work.

Friends call me Rusto please lol. I'm far from a pro at all this. So heres my opinion on the minnows. 500 was just a little snack for them. The little ones need a place to get away from the all the predators. Do you have any plants so the forge fish can thrive also?

Rusto is right about the importance of of pond weeds. We had trouble keeping small forage fish until the American Pondweed spread. Now we have lots of little, medium, and big fish, much healthier ecosystem.

I know you're right. Especially after what we saw last season. Besides the minnows, we had an astronomical amount of baby fish around the entire pond. Everywhere you went were hundreds if not thousands of babies. By fall they were wiped out along with a good portion of the bluegills.


All we have for plant growth currently is one small batch of cattails and 2 other small patches of some type of stringy weed plant that grows under the water and comes out about 8 or so inches.


Working on some new structure right now.

When I had no veggies in the pond and after doing an e survey showing few 2 to 3" Bg, I was told to build brush piles in the shallow shoreline water. I built 9 brush piles and by spring I had a boom of 2 to 3" Bg.

Electroshocking near weedbeds convinced me. Water looked like it was boiling with thousands of YOY fish!

Is there a best method to transplant American Pond Weed? I have a source just need to know how deep to dig, if it can be/should be cleaned, do roots need to be planted or just dumped etc. My pond is really low now. Should I wait until it fills up? My wetland is full and it could be put there now.

SC, I had my Am Pondweed planted. They dug in shallow water and placed roots in the underwater soil. Based on that, I suspect you might be wise to wait until your pond fills, then plant. Not sure it would survive being inundated five or six feet right away, or (on the other extreme) left on dry land for weeks.

I'm no expert, just observing from my experience. Be sure you have identified the right plant, and that you don't have unwelcome hitchhikers!

About half of the stumps-with-dirty-root-balls I left in my second pond floated up too.

I picked up a hand full or two of it that I found growing in a local lake. Placed it in wet newspaper for travel, and then renced it off under the faucet and made sure there was only apw and nothing else attached the sprigs. I then just stuck the stims (rooted end) into the ponds bottom in about a foot of water. It took off growing and spreading around the pond.

That sounds like a great idea. We're getting ready to do a junk timber cut and we should have loads of tops to make brush piles.

If your small fish or stocked fatheads disappear fast, then there might be too many predators in the pond. How many fish do you harvest out of the pond each year (and what size /species are they)?

Rough rule of thumb is 20% of the pond surface area should be cover for the fish to utilize, mixed between shallow and deep water.

20%??


Good Lord we have our work cut out for us. We're working on new structure now.


We haven't fished our pond yet which is odd with how much I enjoy fishing. We just keep throwing in more fish and feeding them. In hindsight, not the best plan.


We were over populated with bluegill so last year we added:

- 10 hybrid striped bass
- 200 silver channel catfish
- 100 Zetts Oswego LM bass
- 200 mix brown, brook and rainbow trout
- 100 crappie
- 200 breeder shiners


A few years ago we added about 10 chain pickerel but rarely see them and they didn't do much to control the BG population. Also had suckers, perch, LM bass and shiners(some are 8" now).

Last year it seemed the bass took over the pond. The 4-5 year old LM are highly aggressive and striking anything and everything. The hybrid and Oswego bass fingerlings we added showed tremendous growth after just one season(2-4x growth). Bluegill population seems down by around 80-90%.


I think the only thing that can save us is adding a lot more habitat to the shallows.

It seems like a lot but it really isn't. Spread it out between shallow water for Spring/Summer/Fall use and deep water for winter use.