Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Spawnign habitat Forage fish

I have read many pond owners have to battle aquatic vegetation and so they have no issues with spawning habitat for forage fish such as GSH, LCS, TFS of other egg scattering forage fish.

I have seen several post where fishing clubs are located on community lakes or ponds where the community wants a weed free lake and stocks CG heavily and spays weeds heavily to get that nice clean weed free lake for the home owners.

It seems the forage base would do much better with some spawning habitat and refuge areas.

I saw these outdoor 100% plastic shrubs and thought they would make nice underwater weed beds for ponds that are void of real weed beds.

Perfect!
The tight spaces are the bomb!

Great idea. Someone needs to try them out and post results.\

Dwight has used some (not for spawning)- see below from the archive.

336 - four foot weeds ready for planting.



http://www.bremerpond.com/current%20structure.jpg

Really cool Bobby!!!

I wonder if FA grows on artificial plants. No nutrients there so maybe they would stay FA free?

Bobby Rice where did you find those artificial shrubs? The main disadvantage that I foresee with them is in some ponds they will get choked and overloaded with filamentous algae. If your pond does get much FA then if you have enough of them they will work great as small fish refuge areas.

I just did a searched on line, I figured FA could clog it up but doesn't it do the same thing on real weed beds? Keep in mind, I was thinking these would be beneficial for ponds or lakes that have heavy weed control and are void weeds and algae. If the pond had clumps of FA something like this might not be needed.

Also , normal FA control measures would be applied. Chemicals, Tilapia.

I see lots of the ponds and lakes around me that have heavy tilapia have no FA and are sprayed for weeds leaving a bowl. Some one might put in larger structure items for the larger fish to have structure but the forage fish have no place to spawn as I see it.

My real wood brush piles were a clogged FA mess last summer. I hit them with Cutrine and that pretty much cleared them up for a while but it came back late summer. I'm hoping stocking crawfish will help with the problem.

See this from the structure archive



http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=90576&fpart=1 Bluegill in weeds video by Dwight .

Natural nutrient competition to FA is phytoplankton and rooted vegetation. Rooted weeds can compete with and suppress phytoplankton. When one or both are present, FA primarily only grows when the nutrients are in excess of what the Phyto and or weeds are using. So if you have FA growing on submerged weeds that is an big indication that you have excessive unutilized nutrients present.

It seems the home owners that want no weeds or FA often win that battle with the fisher person home owners in those type of waters.

It seems like it would be an idea to try for those folks that want to try and make a decent fishing pond out of what typically would be a bare nude pond with BG and lots of bass and not much other forage fish do to lack of habitat.

one could fill in under ones dock with them to pull fish near the dock and the shade from the dock would help the FA issue if that issue is an issue in a particular body of water.

You could check on things every evening and see what condition your condition is in.