Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Property Projects & Construction What did you do at your pond today?

Tracy were those diapers yours!

Stocked some LMB and Channel cats over the weekend. No floaters yet.

Haha Pat I was pretty sure someone like you would ask. So, No not mine but another grandchild that hangs around the house on a regular basis. Those pull up panty diapers are everywhere including my truck because of possible stinky accidents she has on occasion. I saw the diaper and had those washed out worms tossed them in the diaper and it really worked and restored them back to new looking by the next morning. After some 40 yrs of fishing and these days I seem to leave a few bags of plastic worms in the boat. I have never seen anything that worked like the diapers so just thought I would pass it along.

From diaper disaster to diaper dandy in one night !

No snakes at all last year. Yellow bellied water snake on a rock this weekend. Banded water snake swimming around today. The ecosystem is filling in the cracks.

Today I completed building my holding pen. Decided all that 1/2" pex tubing I had left over was going to get put to use. The pen is 4' in diameter and 3' deep. Had to buy some "T's", a bag of crimp rings, and a roll of 3/4" 3'x 25' plastic fencing. A few pieces of pool noodle that I also had on hand around the top.

[img]https://photos.app.goo.gl/B2DTReNsrJwj5i3y8[/img]

Had to add a little ballast to get it to sink, but I think it'll get the job done.

[img]https://photos.app.goo.gl/GPkCnjp1qfn1RnwH9[/img]

Making a trip to Overton's this weekend to buy 50 RES and 50 CNBG. I plan to hold them in the pen for a couple days to keep and eye on them before turning them loose. Then the pen will be used to hold anything I catch until I have enough to clean. My BSFL should be coming on strong soon so I can feed those to anything in the pen.

I found 4 more large dead BG. That makes 12 in the past two weeks. I suspect it's from the 22 or so 3-4 year olds I put in the pond in December 2015 in order to get a rapid spawn the next spring. That would make them in excess of six, maybe seven years old now, and the stress of spawning maybe killed them. All appeared to be females, from what I could tell.

If you dont mind me asking John, were these native NA BG? What would you guess their average length being at that age?

Northern native BG, about 7 to 8 inches. They came out of a crowded pond, and were already spawning prior to my transferring them. I estimate they were 3-4 year olds when I transferred them.

I turned on aeration today (1pm -4pm) x7 days a week. I will increase the hours next week. Gotta ease into it.
Water is still pretty cold.

I also added 700lbs of ag lime and loaded up the Aquapro feeder.

How did you know to add the Ag lime? Simple ph test strip?
Also, you are the man, hanging in there with AquaPro. I gave up. I’m amazed at how far the TX feeder throws food, and how wide the pattern is.
I got the leaves all mowed back from the bank. (After I replaced the leaking gas tank in my Craftsman lawn tractor..)
I still have water going out the overflow pipe. Certainly the longest I’ve ever been at full. We had a 1/2” rain a few days ago, but it must have come down awfully fast. Lots of runoff. I’m hoping maybe my leak has self sealed. Ha!
I might need to address FA. I’m thinking a short tooth rake. I don’t want to lose any glass shrimp though.

Then I sat down, and drank a cold beer.

My pond is solid clay. I add around 2 tons of lime per year and still have problems staying above 6 PH.

The Aquapro was a long drawn out battle of re-engineering...
I do low voltage control for a living so it became a matter of pride.


Did your Aquapro become fish habitat?

Yesterday I noticed a sheen on the pond, and today half of the surface is covered in a fine light green powder. I'm hoping the last two days of cloudless sunshine has promoted a new pollen explosion. Regardless, I've started ramping up the aeration. Still need to pull the diffuser and clean it off, but the boil appears to be pretty strong.

On a side note, I started putting together a container garden. Ten 27 gallon totes filled with equal portions of garden and top soil. Drilled weap holes around the sides about 2 inches up from the bottom so there should always be damp soil at the bottom to promote root growth. Dont know if it'll be successful or not, but you never know till you try.

[img]https://photos.app.goo.gl/M9hjv9pL8nzV1GBN6[/img]

Next project is to get some more ag lime in the pond.

I did a rebuild on my two Kasco duel head aeration motors this past week. Started up the system and am getting little air to the 6 diffusers. So I started looking for the problem. I have approx. 1800' of air line not to include the weighted lines. While I was checking the 1 1/2" line I came across some water in the line, so I am checking on the connections in the air line and blowing out the water. At the connections, I can cup my hand over the tubing which builds some pressure and will then blow some water out. I got about a 3rd of the air line done. More to do today. Looking for leaks, blowing out the water and then will be checking the 200 yds of 1" pvc and the 6 valves that feed the weighted lines. I've never had to do all this over the past 3 yrs so after checking all this, if it does not improve the air, then I will look at my rebuild to see what I did wrong. Pain in the arse

It’s still down by the pond. I’m sure it can be salvaged, and put back in to use. I just don’t get to the pond often enough. It’s frustrating to go back up after two weeks, and see the feed level hadn’t changed.
I hope to get something for it on Craigslist..

I’ve never checked my water ph, or for anything else. Except temp. I guess ignorance is bliss.

I'm up to an hour on the aeration ramp up so I took the opportunity to pull the diffuser up and clean it off. I was amazed at just how lite the sludge on the membranes was. Just had to run my hand over each one a couple of times and they were back to being black again.

Also tried throwing the few BSFL I've accumulated. Sadly, there was very little response, but I havent fed anything this year till now. One thing I did find out, tho, is these little critters will float forever when still alive. Accidentally dropped a couple in the holding pen and they were still floating an hour later (the pen is empty).

Picked up 7 sacks of Optimal feed in Longview. Put new battery in Texas Hunter feeder on forage pond. Only half a dozen CNBG in there now, but should be a lot more in a month after they spawn.

CNBG, LMB, and even HSB went crazy at 7:15pm feeding. LMB and HSB particularly loved the great big Optimal Hand Throw feed, though I did see a few ambitious CNBG pecking away at it. Good for them! Only drawback is that the commotion attracted a GBH, 2 cormorants, and 2 geese.

I bought a GBH decoy last week and havent seen a single wading bird on the pond since. When I sit on the porch in the evening, I see several egrets and even a few rosset spoonbills circle above the trees with interest, but once they see the decoy, they move on. May be worth trying one at your feeder, but I dont know if it'll have much affect on the geese.

Thanks, Mike. Worth a try! I do try to time feeders to go off simultaneously, which makes it harder for birds to focus on one spot. Still, hate seeing geese steal food and cormorants eat fish.

The Polk County Hookers (local fishing group) visited the East Texas Fish Hatchery for a behind the scenes tour. Saw how they breed hybrid basses. (Lots or art - plenty of science.) McDonalds jars. Smallmouth eggs and fry on mats.

Much discussion of cormorants. (They have a permit to properly control them.)

Saw a nice bald eagle over the ponds.

A very impressive place. Very educational.

That might be a neat way to have one of our next N/E Texas Pond Boss Get-Togethers. Some Saturday we could all meet there in Athens at the State Hatchery...take the tour...maybe Bob could attend and give a talk and others talk...we could pitch in for a catered lunch.

Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center - Athens, Tx

I'd be up for that, Zep.

Culled 14, released 6. Largest around 3.8lb. Lots of feeding activity by CNBG and HSB.

Total 188 LMB culled since 1 October. Goal: 250 by this 1 October.

Wife and I were thinking of going to the hatchery this weekend just for something to do. I haven't been since the 90's back when a buddy and I were fishing lake Same Rayburn and caught the lake record lmb. 13.68 pounds at the time. Lone star lunker program picked her up and they let us come to Athens to visit her while she tried to spawn there. They later brought her back to us on Sam Rayburn and we took her back out and released her back into the 16ft. water we caught her!! It looks like a lot more to do there now than back then.