Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? Why no fish population

Purchased some land with a pond that showed no sign of a fish population and i cant figure out why ??


A few things i now of as fact
1 pond size about 2/3 acre
2 pond depth right now deepest point 7 ft 9 inches
3 pond depth in mid summer i think would be no less than 5 ft
4 location high on mountain with about 6 acres for run off
5 no known water contaminates
6 watershield is thick and thriveing
7 i have observed this pond for 12 years and maybe early on i did see a few fish flop
8 even during a drought in this area several ponds went dry this one held up great
9 last year i did observe a few minnows but no other fish
10 this year i observe crawdads , salamnders , tad poles , giant snakes and super giant alligator snappers
11 impossible for fish to swim upstream to this pond 40 ft straight up water fall and creek stays dry most of the year
12 nearest water with fish is 1/2 mile away
13 i stocked it 2 moths ago with 5 grass carp 2 lb fatheads and 125 channel cat
14 yesterday the flatheads looked to be increaseing for they would cover a slice of bread
15 my wife caught 12 channel cat yesterday and they look to have grown a 1nch or so and looked great she also caught 1 of the grass carp and it looked great as well
16 pond was used for watering cattle for years but hasnt in the last 15 and is about 50 years old
locals cant recall it ever being stocked with fish just used for live stock
17 was a large stand of walnut that may be in the run off area but i have cut most of them out
18 water is mostly clear and smells good

I agree. I don't think I've ever seen a 50 year old water hole that nobody has ever put some fish in.

I know nothing about spatterdock but sometimes plants get so thick that they kill off all of the fish. Well, I say all, but I've never seen all fish die. But too many plants is all that I can think of.

+1 to what Dave said. FWIW when I was growing up Doc Green made a pond down by the river. For the first year or two the fish he put in did great. Then the pond became choked with vegetation. Never was worth a dang to fish there after. Could only catch a very few small ones. I always suspected that the river high water events every spring stocked those.

so from my research id say to start now with a product containing 2 4 d such as navigate ,,, where is the best place to purchase it if possible

Before you get to much 24D ask around on the forum ---just to make sure that is the right thing to do.

I don't think I would do that unless you know an awful lot about what you are doing.

understand the hesitation but can anyone give me another option ,, if weeds is the problem wouldnt doing nothing be just as bad .. if i try and kill them out slowly wouldnt that work

I advise caution on all chemicals unless you know a lot about them. I don't.

Post a question about what to do in the aquatic vegetation section. Kelly Duffie hangs out there and he is a pond veggie professional.

Dave - I sent Scatterlands a PM, just FYI

thanks guys pm replied to

Thanks Kelly.

If there were a lot of black walnuts in the area, they secrete a toxin that could be (in enough quantity) used as a toxin for killing fish.......

thats what i heard as well ,,,,well cedar do it as well ,,, we have been cutting all the cedar and walnut out of the drainage area

Black walnuts are extremely toxic to dogs and horses as well. Just learned that so I thought I'd share.

The toxin is called Juglone. Juglone is poorly soluble in water and does not move very far in the soil. The toxin breaks down when exposed to air, water and bacteria.

I expect you can rule out the walnut trees and please do not cut them down because of that. Great shade tree and can be made really thick if very old and you trim the branches back to only 4-6" stump size in the spring.

I would expect that you do have a low PH in the water. You could be getting PH shock with heavy rains flushing in from the creek in a heavy rain event.

Cheers Don

the juglone toxin works great for picking crawlers, they come rolling out of the ground eager to hop in your worm bucket. small bottles of the black walnut/juglone extract available on ebay and some youtube videos on using the chemical to make bait picking easy. Or can soak it out of the walnuts.