After watching NEDOCS most recent sein video, I found the time to run a 40" sein twice today in the shallow end of the pond. I was looking for smaller sized cnbg but what I found caught me totally off guard. The net was full of TFS, most in the 1" range but a few up to 5". And I thought I had lost all my TFS this winter due to a longer and colder winter. I ran some temps this past FEB. and March and found some 42 degree water at or around 6' around the pond. At the time the pond had a lot of suspended detritus along with it also being very fertile and green. The only thing I can come up with is the cloudy water held higher temps somewhere in the ponds waters. Now the downside of the survey found very few small cnbg but as Todd Overton mentioned to me once when my small 2 to 3" cnbg numbers where down, the TFS made up for the low cnbg numbers. My grandson helped with the seining today where we tested 4' water depths and less. HAPPY! HAPPY! HAPPY! These TFS will take some pressure off the Cnbg and maybe let them grow to the 4 to 6" length that I need. One more thing is I have been seeing a lot for 1" fry around the feeders but could not recognize them, now I know what I have been seeing. They have always hung around the feeders for the past 3 to 4 yrs

That is GREAT news, Tracy! Congratulations!

I'm really tempted to get some TFS myself now, though not so sure I have enough fertility to really support them in the manner to which they are accustomed, as divorce lawyers say.

Frank, everyone talks of fertile water for TFs and for me I started off fertilizing the pond from the very beginning. I have to say for 3 yrs I had great fertile water and then something happened to cause excess detritus suspended in the water along with it being fertile with 10 to 12" visibility, causing me to worry to much. So I added some Alum Sulfate and cleared the water to 36" and have used fish food this year to fertilize where now I am at 26" of nice olive green water today. Hope these number of visibility might help you make a call on whether to add TFS or not.

My viz is about the lowest it's ever been, around 30 inches. Gotta think all the Saharan dust is partially responsible, though. It's been proven to fertilize the oceans and I'll bet is doing the same in our BOWs.