Pond Boss
I just bought a piece of property that has a pond, maybe 3/4 acre according to the survey. 12 feet at the deepest, edges quite shallow. This is an old cow pond, never touched until now. The pond is fishable, however the fish tend to be small bullhead. There supposedly are some bass, turtles, frogs, minnows and bluegillin the pond, I think stocked in the past by the DNR but I have yet to catch those. Pond stays muddy, visible to about a foot on a good day. I have been watching this site ever since discovering it and sense that I might have a bullhead problem. Doubt I can catch enough to make a difference. I don't have a lot of money to spend on the pond, and with the lack of rainfall hate to pump the pond dry and start from scratch to get rid of these vermin. So my questions:

Should I learn to like bullheads? The kids like catching them.

What are the procedures for Retonene<sp>? Can these be killed off along with everything else in the pond? When should I do this? What kind of work is it? (I have visions of thousands of dead fish... there goes the neighborhood.)

Where do I get some really big fish to eat everything else.. Bass, Flatheads, Channel Cat, etc?

Any advice would be appeciated.

Kyle
Kyle, I have a few ponds with bullhead. I have just learned to live with them. Anytime I catch one it does not go back in the pond. If you get really mad at them get a bunch of kids, cane poles, and a can of worms.

Retonene requires a license to use, thats about all I know about it.

just my $.02, hope this helps
Howdy, Kyle, and welcome to the forum.

Rotenone works by causing the fish to suffocate. Like Jake indicated, it is not a DYI proposition. You would be killing every fish in the pond IIRC, as I don't think Bullheads are particularly sensitive to rotenone. If you want to pursue that route, you would be ahead to lower the water level in the pond first (say, by a siphon over the dam) so that less rotenone (and hence less $) is needed.

Since you just bought the place, why not you and the kids fish it a bunch and see just what kinds and sizes of fish you have in it. Remove every BH caught and try eating some of the ones that are big enough - they're supposed to be among the best tasting of catfish.

If the pond is very low on predators (bass), adding them in addition to fishing may well get your BH under control - at least to where the BH you catch in the future are eating size.
Not having a lot of $ to spend on the pond isn't all that unusual around here. Rotenone application and re-stocking can be fairly expensive but it is a sure thing.

Get to know your pond and then hammer them if you consider them a problem. A Cub Scout Group with someone to take the fish off the hook or at least clip a top fin can be of some value. A couple of large traps can also make a difference and they make good garden fertilizer.

I have found that if you are truly infested with them, they will dominate everything else. If you are not satisfied with your ability to control them through trapping and fishing, you might do some good with a mess of 6 to 12 inch bass. This may be the only time that I would recommend adding bass to a pond of less than 2 acres. Whup'em over time.

Hey, welcome to PB. Have fun and don't sweat the small stuff.
There are some inexpensive trapping methods also.

Take a plastic garbage can with a lid. Cut a hole the size of a soda can in the lid. Then secure the lid to the garbage can with some wire.

Put some kind of bait like fish food, bread, or roadkill in the can and sink it in the pond. Have a rope tied to the garbage can and the shore. Let the can sit for a few hours, then quickly haul it in and see what you get.

You may have to experiment with the best places to sink the can.

It does work, but you have to keep at it.

This in conjunction with getting some bigger bass in there will start to reduce the bullhead numbers, along with removal by fishing of course.

While it's not very recommended to stock your pond with fish from other waters, you can catch bass elswhere and put them in your pond; this would be the most cost effective way of getting more bass.
Thanks for the ideas. I will keep up with fishing them out, trapping sounds good too. Not a lot of kids out here to open up the fishing to. Another question, actually two. 1. How hard are the Bull Head on other fish if I want to stock other fish? 2. And, this one might be trickier, how do I keep fishing worms alive and on site for the kids I do allow to fish. Buying them at WalMart gets a bit expensive. Could I build a worm bed somehwere? Lots of dead timber and good dirt around. Might be a place to throw coffee grinds or kitchen waste also. Any plans or ideas?
Bullheads can eat most any other type of fish that they can fit into their nasty, nasty mouths.

So let's say you were going to stock some 3" long fish. A lot of those 3" fish are going to get eaten by the bullheads.

Of course, there are some species of fish that may be able to avoid being eaten by bullheads better than other species.

Basically, the bullheads are another mouth to feed at the expense of you and the other 'desired' fish in the pond.

On the worm issue, there have been a few very informative threads about raising and keeping worms, but you'd have to search for them.
Has anyone tried a variation on a pound net to trap fish? Friends of mine use them here on the bay to make a living, so I wonder how well they might work on a smaller scale. Here's a good diagram from the MD DNR.
http://www.dnr.state.md.us/fisheries/commercial/poundnet.html

A LONG time ago, I read a book called "How To Get Out Of The Rat Race And live On $10 A Month." In it, it described dumping 'tennis-court lime' in a stream to kill trout and pick them up down stream. If I remember right, the tennis court lime was suppose to eliminate the oxygen out of the water, stunning the fish. Any thoughts from the Scientists here? As I have posted in the past, I too have a yellow-bullhead 'issue' and even observed several hundred or more fry in a black cloud cruizing the edge of my pond this year...
Posted By: JoeG Re: New Pond Owner - Suspect Many Many Bullhead - 08/25/08 08:26 AM
I had always heard excess lime would clog the gills causing suffocation, then you come on this site and they say dump it in by the ton, I am guessing these would be two different kinds of lime.
Aglime (tiny pieces of limestone) = safe by the ton. Very slow release.

Hydrated lime (very fine powder) = very dusty, used to kill fish sometimes. Quick release, affects ponds much, much faster.

There are chemical differences as well as the physical ones. Try breathing both of them by accident and the difference is obvious.
I suppose a good test would be to take a BG or small Bass in a gallon jar and "experiment" with meassured doses. If nothing else, you could laugh like a mad-man and keep the HandyCam rolling and possibly sell the movie rights??? (-:
A few weeks ago I noticed little clouds (schools) of small black catfish looking critters. Now I know they are black bullheads. This is a new pond (January) that I stocked with 10 of Overton's Hybrid Stripers and 100 CNB. Nothing else. We had a huge flooding rain a couple of months ago and I think the suckers may have flooded over from my neighbors cattle pond that is loaded with them. I have been trapping them with a minnow trap with bologna and hot dogs. They are only about an inch long but they are everywhere.

I talked with Todd Overton and he suggested some adult LMB to control them. I just got back from his place and stocked the .2 acre, .5 acre feet pond with 15 of his beautiful 1 1/4 lb LMB . I hope they are hungry. I am going to continue to trap what I can. They have not showed up in the sister pond which is larger (.4 acres). I do have a screen on the 18" pipe that joins the 2 ponds.

Let us hope for the best. Any other suggestions are welcome!
Stay with what Todd says.
Todd's advice is about the only option I see feasible to keep the bullheads from completely taking over.
On a side note, there are way too many pictures of Clint on that link to the stocker LMB.
Hi my name is andrew and me and my father love bullheads and we r willing to come and fish as many as we can out for u if u will just e mail me at Southern_Styles_69@yahoo.com thank u
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