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I have plenty of preexisting dead falls in the 1-8' range but there is absolutely 0 over wintering cover in the pond so adding the cedar (and more) will be vital. I caught and removed 18 stunted bluegill yesterday afternoon knowing it might be the last day to safely ice fish the pond this season.


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If you have stunted BG you have a very steep slippery fish management hill to climb.


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To add a little bit to this conversation:
Yes, this would make a good story for Pond Boss magazine. I'm interested in that.

Regarding the fishery, I'll sum up what everyone is telling you via their words and links.

1) You need some bass to minimize bluegill reproduction to decrease survival rates and competition for food among bluegills.
2) Stunted bluegills (or any fish, for that matter) won't grow to its potential.
3) Just because a fish is "stunted" doesn't mean it will have "stunted" babies. It won't. "Stunting" from overcrowding is not inherited. It's environmental.
4) Adding new bluegill is a good idea to get young blood into the system.
5) Start a supplemental feeding program with a good quality feed, once water temperature is above 60 degrees. You'll soon see the "feed hogs" coming on a regular basis. Those fish have the best potential to reach your goals quickly.
6) Seining isn't a good idea. But, trapping is. You can set several traps. Both bluegills and bullheads readily come to baited traps.
7) Stock redear sunfish. I noticed yellow grubs in your bluegills. They'll help minimize that.
8) As you feed and cull, you'll start seeing a percentage of bluegills outgrowing the rest. Those fish are your best fish...for that pond. Keep them in the pond. If you're really serious, weigh and measure bluegills as you go to figure out body condition, so you'll absolutely know when fish of certain lengths are out-performing other fish of that size.
9) This is a cool project. Keep good records of what you stock, what you cull, when you do it, etc. You'll benefit quite a few people with a good set of records that can be produced into a story for the PondBoss magazine. The editor or one of his staff can readily help you with putting together the story. PS - Take a few before, during, and after pictures.

Last edited by Bill Cody; 02/07/17 12:32 PM. Reason: added a postscript.

Teach a man to grow fish...
He can teach to catch fish...
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You guys have been a great help! Today I transfered 4 more male bluegills over 8" to the pond - 5 gallon bucket, 4 gallons of water and salt added per the wonderful recommendations!

I'm patiently waiting for the ice to come off the pond before I stock some bass to clean house on the smaller, overpopulated bluegills and black crappie.

Here is the largest male that went into the pond today - 9 1/4"


The shorelines are starting to thaw, my secondary feeder creek has thawed, and it appeared as if the upper pond was dumping a bit more water than last week with the 60 degree temps today. Water quality was still excellent!

I'm going to draft up a stocking plan and a log tonight to help keep detailed records.

Bob thanks for the suggesting to trap the runt fish. My 3 sons and I can make a fun project of building a trap and maintaining it in the pond. I'm sure they'll love helping out!

I need to get ahold of the HOA president soon to see if they can fund a dock build this year. If I get a dock on the pond it will be much easier to hand feed the fish.

I need to add some signage to the pond so other folks don't start removing the larger stocked bluegills.

Does anyone know of a good source for RES in Eastern or Southeastern Iowa???


Mat Peirce
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Lots of good advice above.

The one thing I can add is to get yourself elected to the HOA.

Then prevail!

It works.

I know from experience. I've done it in several HOAs.

One week from today I'm going to be putting grass carp in a decorative pond next to our HOA clubhouse. When we bought here about three years ago, one could almost walk across that pond during the summer due to American pondweed. We are adjacent to a golf course so it receives incredible levels of nutrients. I've slowed that. I got rid of most of the chemicals. This is the next step.

Make your voice heard. Come here for advice.

Ken

P.S. I'm writing this from our "snowbird" home on a North Carolina island. I don't have these issues at our home in WV.

Last edited by catmandoo; 02/11/17 07:40 PM. Reason: Added P.S.

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catmandoo they asked me to be the president at the last meeting and I kindly declined - looking back I should have ran with it! Its an easy going bunch of folks so things should run fairly smoothly for the most part.

My wife bought me a tagging gun and tags for Valentines Day so I'll start tagging and clipping fish to keep better records.

Here is my stocking plan for 2017 - any comments, concerns, or suggestions?



Multiple entries per species represent the different bodies of water the fish will be sourced from

Last edited by Matzilla; 02/15/17 05:51 PM.

Mat Peirce
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LMB, BG, YP, WE, HSB, RES, BCP
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Here's a picture of the first tagged bluegill to go into the pond...hopefully the ice comes off tonight with the rain we're getting. Saturday the pond was still 2/3 iced up



I will be getting some bass to stock in the next couple of weeks


Mat Peirce
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Matzilla, that golden color along the bottom of the BG is beautiful


1 ac pond LMB, BG, RES, CC
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is that tag backwards?

Cody note- It also looks like the tag is inserted backwards, unless it a some sort of new tag style. The T on the outside looks as if it would snag weed leaves and stems and could hinder swimming and maneuvering.

Last edited by Bill Cody; 02/21/17 10:01 AM.

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It looks backwards but it's just the angle of the tag in the photo...so far the bluegill I've stocked have come from extremely clear water sand pits. The bluegills have some amazing colors and are typically very aggressive feeders. I hope they thrive in my pond!

Though my pond finally iced out in the last week, it's a bit too cold for me to open water fish again this weekend. I'm hoping to get a couple SMB and LMB transferred in the coming weeks, weather permitting

The tag gun is simply a clothing tagger with small sized needle and 1.5" clear tags


Mat Peirce
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LMB, BG, YP, WE, HSB, RES, BCP
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I went down to the pond yesterday to bale water from both boats and get them moved to the trail access. I also spent a little time fishing and caught one of the stocked bluegill. It looks like something had gotten ahold of him by the dorsal fin. I haven't seen many GBH or diving ducks around lately





Water clarity is still very good with 4-5' of visibility, vegetation is starting to grow around the shorelines and the turtles were quite content sunning themselves on the deadfalls

Last edited by Matzilla; 03/20/17 08:46 AM.

Mat Peirce
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LMB, BG, YP, WE, HSB, RES, BCP
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Clarity has been reduced to about 2' after lots of spring rains the last two weeks. My 2-5' depth zone is springing vegetation surprisingly quick. I will pull some for a sample soon. I'm also going to make a secchi disc for clarity measurements. Some of the other hoa members were fishing and caught a few stunted bluegill and removed 5 bullheads for me. I placed sings at the pond trailhead requesting bullheads not be returned to the pond when caught and all bass and bluegill be returned until further notice. I set a date to transfer some lmb to the pond...pictures will follow


Mat Peirce
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I added 3 more male bluegill and my first pair of LMB last night - the bass were 8 and 10". I'm hoping to make a fish trap this weekend so I can start catching and removing bullhead from the pond which will be provided to family for flathead bait.







Visibility is still declining and the FA has started to cover about 20% of the pond - I may start raking it this weekend.





I pulled some of the submerged weeds which appear to be curly leaf pondweed.


I've also spotted some american pondweed mixed it. Water temp was 63 degrees in 1 FOW near the south bank


Mat Peirce
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Curious, how did you sex the male vs female LMB?

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I have no idea the sex of the LMB but the bluegills were for sure males. There are a few bass starting to sun in the shallows around here but they're a few weeks away from building beds yet.


Mat Peirce
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I spent quite a bit of time on the pond Friday afternoon just rowing around and making observations - shallows were 63 degrees surface temp on the north end and 60 on the south.

I spotted 6 male LMB fanning out bedding areas. The 3 largest are right around 18". These guys must be native to the pond because the largest I've stocked was spotted on the south side fanning his own little bed.

The native bluegill are cruising shallows and I did see a 6" native female cruising around.

My curly leaf pondweed is exploding in the shallows and the FA has started breaking up on the surface do to irregular winds. I found a few underwater FA blooms smothering curly leaf on the north end.

There are a couple of shallow sand beds where feeder springs dump into the pond. The sand must have been brought in at some point as the creek beds are pure clay all the way down the ravine.

We stocked 250-300 FHM from a local source Saturday. Due to work I have to postpone bass stocking and building a trap for the BH this weekend.

Here is a shot of my water clarity and pond weed explosion


I need to bring my portable Humminbird Helix 5 to the pond and make a rough contour map while the clarity is still excellent

Last edited by Matzilla; 04/23/17 11:48 AM.

Mat Peirce
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LMB, BG, YP, WE, HSB, RES, BCP
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I took my 3 y/o son out today and caught some bluegills to transfer to the pond. So far I'm up to 37 bluegills stocked total with 26 being mature males. All bluegills have been over 7" and of great body condition. I'll keep adding the best of the best that I catch to the pond. I can't wait to add some of the river strain gills to the mix this fall

I have a nice algae bloom going on this week with some very turbid water after all of the rains. Things cleared up to 18" of visibility today after being around 6" sunday. Surface tamps have dropped from 63 to 56 degrees. no sign of my male bass with the temperature drop but I'm sure they will be on beds again soon.

I still need to get some more 8-12" bass stocked asap.

One of the recent males

Last edited by Matzilla; 05/02/17 03:08 PM.

Mat Peirce
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Saturday my youngest and I went bluegill fishing and ended up landing a healthy 13.75" LMB which we transferred to the pond. My FA is still covering the shore to 5' drop off but the curly leaf is starting to taper off a bit. The warm temperatures recently should be triggering the LMB and BG spawn very soon. I didn't have time to row the boat around and look for beds but its on the to do list for this week.



My older boys never want to fish but my 3 y/o absolutely loves catching fish and transferring them to the pond. I snapped this picture against his wishes - he wanted to get the tags in him first haha

we've still been too busy to venture up to my cousins place to catch some of his shorter bass and transfer them down to my pond. Maybe soon!

I have started building a cloverleaf trap for bullheads which will go into the pond this week.

Last edited by Matzilla; 05/15/17 11:37 AM.

Mat Peirce
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Matzilla - Will the cloverleaf trap be selective or will you simply hand-cull the bullheads out? Wondering how you keep the bluegill out of the trap. Thanks.


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what kind of tag are you using, looks almost like clothing tags, I thought about just trying those.


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I'll hand cull the fish stuck in the trap but might use it to help balance out my stunted BCP and BG

The tags are simple clothing tags and I'm using a small, cheap clothing tagging gun. So far it has worked pretty well. You can get tags in many different colors and styles for extremely cheap.


Mat Peirce
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LMB, BG, YP, WE, HSB, RES, BCP
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I had a busy weekend at the pond - even with the terrible weather! I got a bag of Sportsmans Choice feed and started hand feeding 1lb/day between 5-6pm. So far I've only see turtles eating the feed. Most of my bluegills and bass roam the other side of my pond which is only accessable via row boat. I'll keep spreading feed daily hoping fish show up.


I made a cloverleaf trap to sample some of the pond fish and remove as many bullheads as possible.


So far its worked pretty well - 10 bullheads the first day which were left for the raccoons to eat. I have quite a few folks begging to have them for bait lol


Today I rowed around the pond and did a little fishing and observing. I have a decent amount of frogs but no signs off tadpoles anywhere. Turtles are cruising around and eating well and I did spot a few small bluegill swimming around the inlet. I also spotted some bluegill beds in one of the only non-algae and curlyleaf covered shallows of the entire pond. I caught 9 BG from 4-6" but none of my tagged stocker BG's.

I managed to catch a decent native LMB - 16.5" but didn't have a scale with me




I stopped to check my outflow pipe and found the head end 75% clogged with sticks and small logs from recent rains and high winds. I got it cleared and checked the tail end to the creek. I need to come up with a wire fence barrier to keep the debris from reaching the mouth of the overflow.

100% outflow capacity


I hope the curlyleaf and FA ease back so my bass and bluegills can get off a decent spawn - at least it is keeping the GBH from eating too many fish in the shallows lol

Last edited by Matzilla; 05/21/17 11:16 PM.

Mat Peirce
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Clearing my outlet has yielded a 12" drop in water level! I saw my first bluegill gulping up feed tonight....I hope others take to the feed soon. My GBH is being Very persistent lately.


Mat Peirce
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LMB, BG, YP, WE, HSB, RES, BCP
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I've feed trained my pond!!! I've been hand spreading 1-1.5lbs of pellets each night at 6pm for 10 days. First the turtles started following us around the shoreline and would trail behind the row boat while we pulled the cloverleaf trap. Now I have 12-14" bass eating pellets and maybe 20-30 bluegills have been slowly popping pellets of the surface after it sits for a few minutes. I think the recent explosion of emergent insect hatches has pull the fish to feed on the floating pellets. I have a congregation of 4-6" bluegills feeding nightly in a shallow corner of the pond. They'll dart deep when the feed hits the surface then quickly rise to eat.

We've also pulled a handfull of stunted bluegills from the pond along with two dozen bullheads in 10 days. Slow steady progress!!!

I also have a nice school of FHM or LMB fry cruising the pond - I haven't seen anything try to eat them yet but it is bound to happen

Last edited by Matzilla; 05/31/17 10:58 PM.

Mat Peirce
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LMB, BG, YP, WE, HSB, RES, BCP
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I'm well over 50 bullheads removed from the pond in the past couple of weeks now. When I feed a little closer to sunset they surface in small groups and I pick them off one at a time with rod and reel. My native bluegills are spawning and so far there's no sign of my stocked large bluegills on beds. Of course, the small native gills built beds completely surrounding my row boat! I have two other large congregations of 4-6" bluegills around the pond but none of those have started fanning out beds yet. The bass are slaughtering mostly staged female BG's near shoreline which is a welcome sight - the males spook out before the bass get close enough to gobble them up.





I'm guessing this BCP is stunted judging his eye to body size - mouth seemed rather small for his body. I released him back to the pond.


Time to start raking the dead curly leaf and FA mats from shore. I'd like to knock down about half of the vegetation off the surface


Mat Peirce
1.25 acre southeast Iowa pond
LMB, BG, YP, WE, HSB, RES, BCP
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