I have to follow-up here if I may.
On the vegetation rebound, Chad, do you think it is possible that you had a boom of chara or nitella, either of which could be mistaken for "pondweed?" It was bushy pondweed right? Chara or nitella is are complex forms of algae and not treatable with active ingredient fluridone, or whitecap or sonar trade names. This would be a possible explanation, then did you use some copper sulfate or did this algae just crash?? I have never seen this type of rebound/crash following fluridone treatment. Not saying it can't happen.
Also I have to request clarification on how Ewest might suggest that Chad move his fish, with 95 deg water temps recorded today on my ponds in the same vicinity as Chads', I can't imagine Chad seining them right now. Nature already removed a significant amount of fish biomass which lightened the load, plus Chad can lighten his feeding regime, or even stop it until fall, and still be ok with small/medium bluegill in a pond with a plankton bloom through the summer. Remember, Chad is a fish farmer now, has likely killed more than 1000 fish?? But he may not have the required help, equipment, time, and experience to move fish successfully in this kind of weather. Rod and reel would work, however, but now most of his big fish have died....Bill Cody can suggest something....
Cast-nets are killers.
PondFrog if you haven't ever been down South you need to make that trip sometime and look at some of the rural farm ponds around here. 80%+ of them have issues. Summers are hot, small ponds are boom and bust, ponds lose fish on a more regular basis than people realize, droughts and dried up ponds are commonplace. With these limitations and challenges I think Chad is doing pretty good so far.
