I dug roughly a 1/2 acre pond about 3.5 years ago in NE Iowa. It is about 18' deep and I do run aeration year round. I stocked it with hybrid/regular bluegill, largemouth and catfish. The first year and a half you couldn't cast without pulling out fish. Late last year and so far this year I am beginning to wonder if there are any fish in the pond anymore. I have never seen a floater and am curious if I should feed/not feed, aerate/not aerate or just quit worrying about it because they are fine? Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!

Do you feed or let them fend for themselves? I have found once I start feeding again, they arent near as eager to bite a hook.

I fed them the first fall and the next spring and quit feeding them after that. After last fall with no bites I sporadically started feeding them this spring. 1-2 times a week.

How often did you fish it? In a pond that size, you could get some hook-shy fish fairly quick with artificials.

This spring has only been about once a week usually with kids so it is almost always night crawlers. I am going to throw a light in there just to see numbers?? See what happens. My wife said "maybe they don't like you anymore". Thanks babe....

Are you sure the fish are still there? If so, there's no reason why you can't catch them. At this time, pond catfish in our area are relating to weeds/brush with ample prey/baitfish for an easy meal. Usually closer to shore on warmer days. Bluegill and bass will be roaming close to the same areas with few bigger male b/g deeper - they'll move more shallow as water temps increase. Bass can be anywhere at this time...

Throw some different baits out there....an ice jig and red worm under a slip float will catch all of those fish

I sure hope they are still there. There were a few hundred there and haven't seen any floaters. It is so wet here the water is still cloudy so even on sunny days you can only see to about 2'. I will definitely try the different bait!!!

There are quite a few pond owners who would love to have 24" of visibility. It's either much deeper or shallower.

If all else fails, nightcrawlers or crickets will catch BG when nothing else does. I wish I had a local source for crickets, because there are days when I struggle to get bit, but throw a little feed out and the water starts churning. I even read here where at least one pond meister pinches a feed pellet into the bend of his hook as bait. Haven't tried that .... YET!

M. Whatley, even on the slowest of days I can get cnbg to bite.I use a tiny circle hook about24 inch below a bobber and for bait I tear off a tiny piece of brown plastic worm or black if that is all you have the size of your feed pellets you are feeding them. They can't tell the difference. Hope this helps. Good luck. Let me know how it works out. If you have to just cast it out where you normally sling feed.

Hey Flame....I find dough balls rolled into the size of a pellet works pretty good too. I'll give the plastic worm pieces a try. I usually always have a bag of Culprit red shad worms on hand.

cwright, how's your water temp right now? In a lot of places things are 30-40 days behind where WT was same time last year.

I think I would try feeding them some pellets. If they don't show up in a couple of days at chow time, I would assume they are MIA for some reason. Any Otter sign or seen cormorants on the pond?

Mike, one of the large advantage to the plastic worm bit is you might catch 20-30 fish and never have to rebait!! When my pond was brand new I used real whole kernel corn but got very tired of rebaiting on every cast. I started using a tiny piece of YELLOW plastic worm and then realized they liked the brown that resembled their feed the best.

The best fishing lure I have found for my cnbg is beaded headed fly. They sell them in packages of 20 or more at BPS in the fly fishing area. If you don't fly fish then just use a clear bobber and your normal tackle. Have the fly about 3' below the bobber. They will hit it fast as you can get it in the water.

From what I've gathered, I think CNBG tend to feed a bit more aggressively than the northern strain. But I was just last night looking at clear casting floats to use flies on my spinning gear. I have a flyrod, but I have it rigged for crappie fishing with a spin cast reel. I have a few small topwaters poppers I want to try.

Mike, I would think just the opposite when comparing Northern to cnbg. My thinking is northern lmb are more aggressive than Florida lmb mostly due to shorter growing season makes them bite more aggressively and lmb are in the sunfish family, so I would think it might be the same with bg. Ha! I could be wrong though lol. Most everyone here knows I am no expert. And like you, I used a fly rod for crappie fishing for most of my life, but I learned how to fly fish a little and am no die hard but if you run across a 3 weight fly rod and some beaded fly's you will have a blast.

As a young boy, we spent many afternoons sculling a jonboat down the river with flyrods. Using small popping bugs and Creme worm rigs for whatever would bite. Then I moved to Tennessee and was introduced to trout fishing in the Smoky Mountains. I love the fight you get on a flyrod and have considered getting a short 3 weight rig to tinker with on the pond. What I have now is much too long and heavy for tiny flies.

It was a long cold winter, is it possible you had a winter kill? If you did you might not have any floaters, deep small pits seem to be more likely to winter kill than shallower ones.

Morning Shorty. I had a few hundred fish in there and if I did have a winter kill I would think I would have seen at least part of on float? Last night we had some severe weather roll in but I was standing down there beforehand and it was dead calm. There were tons of bugs landing on the water. We have a lot of frogs and a fresh tadpole hatch and with the calm water there was a lot of action on the surface and I doubt it was all frogs. I think there are some troopers left in there. We'll see as the weather gets warmer. Thanks for the input!!

cwright72.....any chance you have otters?

otters are primarily active at night and can eat a ton of fish.

that's what happened to me...all of sudden my pond became a no bite zone

is your pond near any creek beds? or large lakes?

Hi Zep. I don't think we have any otters. An otter would have to go maybe 3 miles to get to our place from the nearest small creek. I will keep an eye out just in case we have a rogue one around. Thanks for the help!

I don't think 3 miles is to far for an otter to travel if there is a travel corridor near by. I don't think they would travel through the streets of a town so much but they will travel across pastures and such. Look for worn paths through the ponds waters edge, and or slides where the ponds bottom is smoothed out where nothing much grows there due to travel path just below the waters surface in the shallows. Also look for scat that has fish scales in it. Become a poop hunter! lol. It was never my plan to be an Otter hunter but became a necessity if I wanted fish. It is not cheap to grow fish and Texas Parks and Wildlife should have thought about that before transporting them back to Texas.

I live in Iowa on top of a hill so my only corridor is through a corn field. I have rock around my pond but I can see far enough in to see a slide so I'll give that a try. I will also be a poop hunter as well!! I'll see if I can find anything with scales in it and go from there. Thanks again!!!

Oh my.....Tracy I was not aware they had a part in this nightmare. Once you've had a major fish loss....it's always on your mind "are they back"? Just last weekend I saw some splashing around the shore that made me think it was something bigger than a fish....and I wondered "are the otters back?"....do they follow the Overton's truck around?...lol. I just wish it was easier to know when they are there....that's the really bad thing about otters...especially if it's a weekend property....many times you have no idea they are there until they have done massive damage to your fish population.

I had a very similar thing happen with my pond. Although I had an electrofishing survey, so I knew fish were in there. In the beginning I fished mainly with spinners and small crankbaits. This year I couldn't get anything to bite, so I switched to a Texas rigged worm and started catching them again.