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I have a 3 acre strip pit that is covered in lilly pads and hydrilla in approximately a 1 acre section of the pit. I don't mind some lilly pads and hydrilla growth, but it has become a lot of growth. Thus affecting the fishing and my major spawning area of the pit. My neighbor has suggested aquatic roundup. I am looking for suggestions on aquatic roundup. Which brand, the amount to use, and what time of year to use it. I would appreciate any suggestions.
Thanks.


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Heath what you likely have are cow lilies otherwise known as spatterdock. It is possible you have lilly pads but spatterdock is much more common in our area. The control is likely the same. I have some in my old pond but to date it is a small desired amount so have never had to try and control it (yet). So I can't give you any help on the control measures.

I have some aquatic glyphosate (Roundup active ingredient) but I can not remember the specific brand right off hand. I think I saw some at Tractor Supply in town the last time I was there. It is in the same area as the pond dye near the hunting supply stuff. If that is what is called for to control the spatterdock fall is an excellent time to control perennials as long as they have not shut down for winter. They are currently moving nutrients from the photosynthesis growing portion of the plant to the root system (to create winter reserves) so translocated herbicides like Roundup are carried to the roots for total kill.

Just an FYI, the reason you can't use regular Roundup is two fold. One, it is not labeled for aquatic use. Two, the aquatic version of glyphosate uses a different carrier that is not potentially toxic to fish. The glyphosate that does the actual killing is no different than Roundup.

Last edited by snrub; 11/04/18 09:28 PM.

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Thanks for your feedback John, that was some very good information.

After looking it up my plant is spatterdock not Lilly pads, good call. One thing I find weird about my spatterdock is that it bulbs every year, but the bulbs never open up to flowers as my neibors ponds spatterdock does. The reason I believe the vegetation has become such a problem is because this portion of my pit is relatively very shallow, in the deeper parts the hydrilla and spatterdock do not grow.

I never thought to look at Tractor Supply, I'll have to go see if they have aquatic roundup and quickly apply it before it gets any colder.

Last edited by Heath Lawrence; 11/05/18 10:55 AM.

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My old refurbished pond (the one directly south of my RES/SMB pond we did not visit at the PBF get together), before I rebuilt and expanded it, was nearly completely covered with spaterdock. The pond dam was breached and being silted in the deepest part of the old pond was only maybe 3 feet deep at the deepest. When I cleaned it out some of the roots of the spaterdick were as big around as my wrist and thick. Was a real eye opener. I had no idea so much biomass was under the water beneath the soil.

So far since the renovation the spaterdock has kept itself to a spot in the middle of the pond where there is a shallow underwater hump and a couple small patches on each side near shore. I like that amount and I hope to keep in contained to that amount in those areas.

Good luck with your eradication. If it covered the whole pond I would be wary of a DO crash as it decomposes. But you have two positive things going for you. It only covers a small portion of your pond and it is cold weather (cold water holds more DO). I would suggest being much more careful how much you kill at a time if it were hot weather, but I would guess you would be fine this time of year.

Also be aware those roots are highly interconnected. Where you are trying to get rid of it, no problem. But if a person was trying to only kill a specific area, you might spray one area and through translocation of chemical through interconnected roots kill some desirable area 50 feet away.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out.

Last edited by snrub; 11/05/18 11:26 AM.

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To the best of my knowledge, TSC doesn't carry aquatic surfactants. HL, you'll need that also. I'm not sure about splatterdock, but lily/lotus leaves are waxy, and need a good surfactant to adhere to the leaves.

Last edited by FireIsHot; 11/05/18 01:51 PM.

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A common good aquatic glysophate aquatic product with surfactant (sticker) is ShoreKlear-Plus (Shore-Klear Plus). They also sell one without surfactant ShoreKlear. Rural King stores have SK Plus.


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I appreciate the feedback.

From what information I could find on Shore-Klear Plus it would be great for my situation. Thanks for telling me about it. It is available at TSC, but almost twice the price as Amazon. It calls for 2.6 gallons per acre for spatterdock. So I believe I'll just apply one gallon on a 1/3 acre section first and see the results. I don't want to remove all of the spatterdock, but just make the area easier to fish. With the plants being highly interconnected as you mentioned, it should not take as much chemicals to reach my desired amount of vegatation. After using Daft Logic's Google Area Calculator my whole spatterdock covered area is only about 3/4 of an acre instead of an acre so this application of Shore-Klear should cover about half that area.

I remember seeing some spatterdock in the middle of your old refurbished pond when I visited your ponds. I remember thinking it was odd that it was growing in the middle of your pond, but I guess that area being an under water hump explains why it was growing there.

I would have to agree the roots of the spatterdock are huge. I've used a Weed Razer that my dad made to cut out the spatterdock and I was impressed with how big the roots are.


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The spatterdock in the middle of that old pond is actually right beside the hump but it will eventually cover the hump also.

More than you probably want to know, but the under water hump was originally a very small island (maybe 10'x20'). When cleaning out the muck in the old pond it got to the point the sides were so steep and slick from the muck I just was not making headway. So rather than trying to push the remaining muck out of the pond, I just turned around and pushed it up to the center of the pond in a high pile (to get the most deep area I could). Named it "Turtle Island. And the turtles did like. What I should have named it was "Canada Goose Island" because I had a pair every year I had to run off as they insisted to make a nest on the island. Perfect protection for them from the coyotes. But I did not want my very own flock of Canada's pooping all over everything all the time. So I raised the dam, put in an overflow pipe at a higher full pool level, and raised the water to where now the island is no longer an island but an under water hump. No more geese problems. The spatterdock had been growing on the east side of the island before raising the water level as that was the portion of the pond where I could never remove the remaining muck so the water was still fairly shallow there. The spatterdock will eventually expand in size to about double what it is now to cover what was the island and is not the hump. But the water is deep enough around that area it should not expand much more than that.

Shen I first cleaned the pond out, a small area just east of the island still held a small amount of water and was too wet for me to clean out. So that area was going to be more shallow water than the areas surrounding it. After the pond filled to the new cleaned out level, there were some very spindly spatterdock leaves that made it to the surface in that area. I thought I was going to have problems with it there. But it must have been just barely too deep because after a couple years of the spatterdock trying to leaf out from that depth, the roots must have dies because it quit trying. Since I raised the pond another 18" since then to cover the island up, that water now should be plenty deep to keep the spatterdock away for quite some time.

The area that I will eventually have to control some of it will be on the south side of the pond where there is some shallow water area. The batch that is there I will eventually have to kill out some of it as it spreads more than I like.

FireIsHot mentioned water approved surfactant was mentioned to add to the water approved glyphosate. If the label calls for it, I would definitely use it. Different mixtures of glyphosate herbicides may or may not already have surfactants included. Plants with a waxy surface surfactants can definitely aid in the chemical entering the plant thus making it more effective. Read the label and see what it recommends. That said, if I had the choice of spraying the spatterdock before it goes dormant without additional surfactant and waiting till an order came in of surfactant and taking the chance the spatterdock would have went dormant (we are right at the knifes edge of that plant shutting down for winter), I would spray it and take the chance. It is not that the glyphosate will not work without the surfactant, it is just that the surfactant breaks down the water tension so it will penetrate the waxy leaves better, making a given dosage more effective. In other words, if it calls for surfactant but you don't have any, use the highest end the legal label rate will allow to make sure you get a kill. Error on the stout side.

Last edited by snrub; 11/06/18 12:45 PM.

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Another very, VERY important thing about using glyphosate products (Roundup). USE CLEAN WATER.

Glyphosate ties up rapidly with any dirt or minerals in the water. Very hard or dirty water can render roundup diminished or even ineffective (if the water is really dirty) if allowed to be in the dirty any length of time before spraying. So DO NOT USE POND WATER.

Home owners that are mixing small amounts can just make sure they use enough (make a strong enough mixture) if they are spot spraying and have hard water. But if a person is using larger amounts doing something to condition the water can make a difference of the effectiveness.

When we are using thousands of gallons of water at a time (our sprayer is 1600 gallons) we condition the water with an agent that ties up the minerals in the water before the glyphosate comes in contact with the water. We used to use ammonium sulfate (spray grade of fertilizer basically). It is kind of a pain to handle so more lately we use commercial water conditioners that are in liquid form that does the same thing. But something easier that a home owner can do for modest amounts of spray mixture is simply use distilled or reverse osmosis drinking water. Pure water instead of water laden with minerals or dirt.

There were some extension studies about using distilled water as the carrier for roundup thirty years ago (back when roundup was $80 a gallon) that showed it was cost effective using distilled water as a carrier. Then the price of RU came down and they came up with water conditioners to tie up the offending minerals that were tieing up the RU so nothing ever came of it.

But you can make glyphosate herbicide more effective by using either completely clean water (distilled) or conditioning the water.

Wow, that was a long boring tirade. But rather than just erase and not post it, someone might be interested.

Edit: Roundup RTU is ready to use with the carrier (water) already included so if you use that homeowner product disreguard all of the above. I'm talking about concentrated RU or generics (typically 4# of active ingredient or above) where it is diluted with water as a carrier of the product before sprayed.

P.S. The above description is also why roundup is deactivated almost immediately when it hits the ground. Only what actually hits the plant stays active. The soil deactivates RU almost immediately. It is not a soil residual herbicide.

Last edited by snrub; 11/06/18 01:04 PM.

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I appreciate you sharing your knowledge John, in the past few threads you have posted I have learned some valuable things.

From what I have read on Shore-Klear Plus it contains a surfacant so I should be covered in that regard. The Shore-Klear (non "plus") doesn't contain a surfacant. As you mentioned, the spatterdock seems to thrive in shallow water, but not in deep water. I find that helpful because it helps me identify which parts of my pond are deeper and which are shallower. I realize I have waited too late in the year to apply glyphosate to my spatterdock before it goes dormant. Therefore do you think it would be best for me to wait until next summer to apply it or go ahead and apply it even though the plants will be dormant by the time I apply. The manufacturer recommended applying in late summer or fall. Either way I can use my Weed Razer to cut out the spatterdock where I do not want it. The reason I am so interested in glyphosate is because when using the weed razer the plants start growing back immediately after being cut and within a month have fully grown back.


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SNRUB, I too appreciate the added info. I never knew, but it makes sense as sometimes I mix and spray and nothing happens, I mix stronger and spray and nothing happens.

2 f/up questions.
1. I could use RO water but my little house tank would take a while to make several gallons. In my garage I have well water (hard and with iron) I also have softened water, I assume that softened water might be better to use to mix with RU, but it just has different 'ions' in it instead of calcium carbonate right? If soft water is better then I'll mix with that, or I guess if I plan ahead I can spend a few hours setting aside gallons of RO water smile

2. IS there a temp requirement for RU to work? I'd love to use it now but daytime temps are probably too low? Why is temp important?

Last edited by canyoncreek; 11/06/18 02:28 PM.
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RU should be used on actively growing plants. In some applications it us best to apply it prior to when plants go dormant and produced foodstuffs are being stored/transferred to the roots.


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Heath I would spray it if the leaves are still green. As Bill says, the roots are getting nutrients for winter stores.

After the hard freeze this Thursday I would not spray it.

You are right on the razors edge of being too late, BUT...... I think there is still a chance that enough spray will get transferred to kill a bunch of it. It might not get as good of kill as earlier in the fall but if it were mine and I wanted it gone I would spray it.

Here is my reasoning. You have the chance of it succeeding or failing or something in between. If it doesn't work you are out a little money but not a huge amount. If you don't spray you already know the stuff will come on like gangbusters in the spring. You can spray it in the spring, but you have to wait till a significant greening up happens to get enough surface area to get the chemical translocated. Plus you are heading into hotter weather where the dieing biomass could cause problems. If you wait too late in the season you could actually cause some DO problems if you treat too much of it at once.

I would take a chance on it working. When we spray Johnsongrass we need an hour before it rains (and potentially washes the chemical off). We consider it rainfast in an hour and I have actually sprayed a field when it started to rain in the middle of the field. Anything that hit dry leaves we had control. Anything that hit wet leaves we did not. The plants that started getting wet with drops of rain had partial control. If you get the glyphosate on the leaves and the plant has not completely shut down, it will translocate into the roots and kill. I don't think the spatterdock has completely shut down "here". After Thursday and Friday's hard freeze, then likely the leaf tissue would be damaged enough to maybe not work.

I would risk wasting a few bucks as opposed to having to deal with it next spring. Worst case you waste a few bucks and still have to deal with it next spring.

Once you realize how much reserves those huge roots hold, hand removal is only good for immediate fishing access. To kill it mechanically you would have to keep the leaves repeatedly removed each year for about three years probably. My roots kept trying to grow in the too deep water for two years after skipping a year after the pond rebuild. So it was three years later that they finally gave up. Those are tough plants.


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Originally Posted By: canyoncreek
SNRUB, I too appreciate the added info. I never knew, but it makes sense as sometimes I mix and spray and nothing happens, I mix stronger and spray and nothing happens.

2 f/up questions.
1. I could use RO water but my little house tank would take a while to make several gallons. In my garage I have well water (hard and with iron) I also have softened water, I assume that softened water might be better to use to mix with RU, but it just has different 'ions' in it instead of calcium carbonate right? If soft water is better then I'll mix with that, or I guess if I plan ahead I can spend a few hours setting aside gallons of RO water smile

2. IS there a temp requirement for RU to work? I'd love to use it now but daytime temps are probably too low? Why is temp important?


Do some searches and all that information is available. I have read most of that over my farming career but I just don't trust my memory to quote it correctly. I know the ammonium sulfate that we used to use to condition the water (and now we use a much more user friendly though more expensive liquid conditioner) tied up certain ions so that the ions would not tie up the glyphosate. But I can't remember without looking it up so I can't say for sure on the softened water. The salt in the softened water might tie up the RU worse. Just can't remember. Glyphosate is a salt, by the way. Table salt will also kill plants if you put enough on. It just does not take much of glyphosate salt.

Here is the easiest solution if you don't want to be a chemist. If you spray a fair amount of RU around your place periodically, simply go to about any coop or farm supply where they sell chemicals to farmers and ask for some water conditioner for use with Roundup. I'll go over to the shed tonight and get you a brand name but there are numerous brand names that work. It will be in a 2.5 gallon jug and it will last you for years (and it is cheap). You will not need a restricted use pesticides applicators license because it is not a restricted use chemical. In a three gallon hand sprayer just put your water in, put three or four tablespoons of the conditioner in, slosh the water around to disperse, then put the glyphosate it. Problem solved. The conditioner will have the right stuff to tie up the ions that are responsible for tying up the RU.

There are populations of weeds that have become resistant to RU. They gain this naturally over time by natural selection. We have populations of waterhemp and marestail that glyphosate will hardly touch it. It is nothing about the chemical causing the plant to change, it is all about natures natural selection process. Any plant that produces gazillions of seeds has the propensity to develop resistance much quicker than plants with low numbers of seeds. It is all about probabilities.

In any plant population of most if not all species there will be the one plant in a thousand or million or billion that will show natural resistance to a herbicide. So lets say in this particular field there is one plant in a billion seeds that have germinated that has this natural resistance to RU (or any other chemical for that matter). You spray the field but this one lone plant survives and produces seed. You have started the resistant portion of the natural selection process. Now if you rotate to some other crop or use mechanical cultivation to destroy it or use some other chemical to get it then maybe that is the end of that resistant population (the importance of mixing up chemicals and modes of action of chemicals and other means of control such as mechanical). But lest say you use only RU in that field for 10 years in a row and it is the only herbicide used. That one resistant plant produces seed. If it is a coclebur plant maybe it only produces a thousand seeds. But if it is a small seeded waterhemp maybe it has 10,000 seeds (see why small seeded plants develop resistance worse?). The next year you spray RU instead on one plant surviving the chemical (remember the RU is still effectively killing the bazillion other plants in the field successfully) ten plants survive. Then the next year a hundred. The next year a thousand plants and so on and so on. All the while the RU is successfully killing all the other plants just like it always have. But you notice each year more and more plants are not being killed. It is not that the plants have modified their construction or genetic make up to resist the RU. It has just been a process of natural selection where you have been killing the plants susceptible to RU while allowing the plants naturally resistant to it to multiply. Then at some point the plants that are naturally resistant out number the plants that are not. And you have a weed resistant to RU. It is not that the weed has changed. It is a natural selection process of naturally occurring resistance. That is why best management practices are used to keep the process happening as slowly as possible. Roundup Ready crops that resist RU originally were selected in the same way, from populations of naturally resistant plants within a susceptible population. Now they do it a lot faster because they can identify the genes that control the resistance and insert them artificially, vastly speeding up the selection process compared to raising many generations of crops.

Long winded explanation to tell you if you use the same chemical over and over and over and over again, you are naturally selecting for the plants that naturally resist it. Its all natures way of adapting.

Roundup does not work as well in cold temperatures. That is likely because most plants do not translocate nutrients as well in cold weather. But very susceptible plants (johnsongrass for example) will still get a good kill in cold (fall) weather. Plants that are tougher to kill with RU (winter annuals like henbit for example) do not respond very well in early cold spring weather. That is why RU has problems with the winter annuals in the spring. A combination of the chemical doesn't work that great on them to begin with and the fact that winter annuals main growth period is when it is in the cold parts of the year RU just isn't that great of chemical on those. 2,4D on the other hand will whack them (but it is volatile so you have to be mindful of your neighbors flowers or garden).

I can't say why your RU doesn't always work. There could be various reasons from the plant not being very susceptible, to resistant populations, to dirty carrier water inactivating the chemical.

If you leave RU in your sprayer over night, spike it a little the next day. The water may have already tied up the glyphosate. Best to use it all within a few hours of mixing. Distilled water will eliminate that, conditioned water will help it.

Last edited by snrub; 11/06/18 04:38 PM.

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Just for kicks canyoncreek, next year buy you a gallon of distilled water and mix your RU in it instead of tap water. See if it helps with the kill. If it does, your water is the problem.


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Guardian is the name of the water conditioner we use for glyphosate products. I have no idea if it is approved for aquatic as that is what we use when we spray fields.

Hey, the internet is amazing. Here it is and it is approved for aquatic use.

Cornbelt brand Guardian Notice the main ingredient is amonium sulfate.

I also notice this has a drift retardant. With the drift retardant you need to calculate out pretty closely the use rate. The reason is the drift management component kind of goes to this is working well at recommended rate to "oh crap" at two or three times the rate. You can also get something similar without the drift management component then the rate is not critical at all because the amonium sulfate ties up the offending ions in the water and if you put more it is just inert ingredients (nitrogen and sulfur fertilizer basically). So if you are a glug glug kind of guy, get the one without the drift retardant component. The drift retardant actually will help prevent over spray (off target drift of small water particles) because it creates surface tension that prevents the water from tearing into such fine droplets. But too much of it and it starts to resemble a really runny version of silly putty in the spray tank and needless to say that is a bad thing.


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Just looked at my spatterdock Heath. About a third of the leaves look curled and inactive but 2/3 looks healthy and active so I think the spray will work, unless spatterdock is just unusually hard to kill. If it was a patch of johnsongrass I would not hesitate to spray it.

Last edited by snrub; 11/06/18 06:42 PM.

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snrub thanks for your explanation and research. I think I learned a few things...

1. I do get a generic 41% concentrated RU by the gallon online. Since it is an offbrand (but best seller online) I don't know for sure if it is truly 41% or not.
2. I think weather conditions may not have been perfect when I sprayed. (no rain, but towards evening when sun going down when pores of plants may have closed?)
3. I can't be sure if there was a partial batch left in the 3 gal sprayer so it may have 'bound up' to the bad water.
4. The water was hard water when I mixed it.

Next time I'm doing distilled and a fresh batch each time, plus spray when the sun is shining!

mutant/hardy plants may be true as well since the grass I don't want to have die is always instantly dead with even the slightest mist of overspray

I'm mostly tackling semi-woody plants that grow under the edge of the tree canopy and poison ivy. They probably are tougher to kill anyway.

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It has been shown that broadleaves with a hairy surface (velvetleaf otherwise known locally as cottonweed) are poorly controlled if sprayed after dark when the pores of the leaves close up. We learned that if this was one of out target weeds, we did not spray after the sun went down. Point is, there are plants that it does make a difference if certain conditions are not met.

Generally speaking, roundup works best on grasses, next best on broadleaves, and poorest on woody type plants. If you have woody type plants something like Remedy will be much more successful. Maybe too successful because if you have a desirable tree nearby it may be a gonner too so a person has to weigh the benefits of killing one thing against the risk of killing something you don't want to.

Remedy along with 2,4D (can buy that mix commercially at a higher cost known as Crossbow) is an excellent brush control fence row chemical. Also cut stumps. But my oh my. Better not have a cotton crop within 10 miles. Cotton is ultra sensitive to 2,4,D and 2,4D is volatile. A person needs to pay attention to where he uses anything with 2,4D (excellent broadleaf killer) and I will often use just straight Remedy if there is any potential of off target damage.

Last edited by snrub; 11/07/18 09:57 AM.

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Well I went to my pit today and I'm not an expert, but the spatterdock looked around 3/4 dead(brown, discolored leaves or Lilly broken off of stem) to me. So therefore I decided not to apply the roundup. In the summer the spatterdock covers the entire area, but come the fall with it becoming dormant for the winter it now doesn't take up nearly the same amount of the pit. Honestly I knew I should have asked for advice sooner in the year, but I've just had higher priorities, building my first house, OT at work and Marine Reserves. I'll just have to wait till next summer to try the roundup. I actually won't have to worry about the spatterdock if we don't have a very wet year in 2019. Because my pit is already 3.5-4 foot low due to the drought we had and the little runoff I get coming in. That was one thing I really like about your ponds John is that they all seemed to get a lot of runoff(I don't know if this is the proper term, but I mean land that water flows down that helps feel up your ponds). My pit being made in the early 1900's solely for coal mining, does not hold water well, do to lake of clay and not much runoff. If we have just normal rainfall levels this year or another drought, a big portion of my pit will dry up.

Now that I'm done with the house and will be moving in shortly I plan to take managing my pond much more seriously. It will definitely be easier to manage my pond when I live only 30 yards from it instead of 30 miles away. I have many projects I plan to try in the coming year.

Sorry for the long boring post. Thanks for all the advice everyone, I'm sure I'll now know what to do next year when the time comes.


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Congratulations on the completion of your new home. If you are like me, you will be out around your pond every chance you get now that you will be living there.

The size of watershed can be a mixed blessing. Too little and you run into the problem you have now. Too much and you get excessive flow through which brings its own problems.

My ponds are pretty skimpy on watershed area also. They can get low but have never gotten as low as you are talking about.

As you get more into it there might be a possibility that you could divert some more watershed into your pond. Might even be a farmer next door that wants a place to go with some water. I had a field on the east side of this place that ran water along the edge of the field during big rains. Neighbor has a pond with almost no runoff. I talked to her and we came to an agreement for me to build a terrace to take the water of a portion of my field and into her pond. Win - win. Something to keep in mind and maybe look at an aerial map or topography map and see if any surrounding area could be diverted.

NRCS can help with such a determination or if you need some advice I'm just a few miles away. Glad to help however I can.

Last edited by snrub; 11/07/18 11:41 PM.

John

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I appreciate all your advice and willingness to help. I've been starting to read some of your past posts and it seems I always learn something new.

I do plan to spend a lot of time around the pond. I'm very interested in hand feeding my fish, especially different feed sizes. This past year I fed the fish with a fish feeder and though the bluegill that ate the feed showed great RW. I didn't have very many that would come to the feeder. I know you have an aeration system in your main pond John so you could possibly have twice the biomass in your pond as normal helping explain the major feeding frenzy everytime you feed the fish. That's more of what I'm looking for and I'm hoping starting with starter pellets will help get the YOY bluegill to become feed trained.


After looking back at your ponds John, you're right, you don't have a very large watershed either. I was just impressed with how full your ponds were at that time compared to my own.

Actually increasing my watershed is going to be my biggest challenge in managing my pond I believe. So far I have a few ideas.
1. I have plans to adjust my bank in a few spots to increase the flow of rain water into the pit. Also have all rainwater from my roof to flow into the pit.
2. Attempt to trap the occasional muskrats I see with 110 conibear traps. I rarely see them, but I definitely see there holes in the bank of the pit especially with the low water level.
3. My pit being surrounded by large trees, I am curious as to how much water they could possibly be consuming from my pit and thus lowering the water level. But I don't plan to go cutting down all my trees either just to have a fuller pit.
4. And talk to neighbor who is a crop farmer who I could possibly work out a deal with to increase my watershed. How you did with your neighbor John.


3 acre strip pit: BG, RES, LMB and BCP.

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