All the habitat I tried to create for FHM spawning and cover was done after hearing an off hand comment from my fish guy that he had seen some ponds with adequate cover maintain a population of FHM AND I had accidentally had a conversation with a pond owner that had stocked FHM in a pond with existing LMB population and had maintained a population of FHM.

My fish guy had not told me I could create enough cover for FHM. In fact after finding out later that I had tried to create enough cover, he had doubts I would be successful. I had not bothered to call him and inquire about doing it. It was my own initiative (likely naive) that I decided to try and create enough cover to maintain a FHM population in my own pond.

I had not discovered PBF yet. I had not bothered to further inquire about it from my fish guy. I just did lots of reading on the internet (how I eventually discovered PBF and PBM) about ponds and fish cover and habitat and decided to try. Did lots of reading about FHM's. Gave me something to do with my new pond along with the "normal" structure projects before and while it was filling.

Had I discovered PBM or called my fish guy to get his advice BEFORE deciding to create FHM cover, I likely would have never tried. Because everyone would have told me it most likely would be a waste of time and effort. But, due to lack of knowledge and anything better to do (at least better that was interesting enough for me to peruse at the time), I did it.

So it is something that is supposed to fail, at least according to conventional wisdom. It probably will fail. But if it does not, maybe we all can learn something from it. Even if it does fail, we will have learned something. That everybody was right in that it is difficult to provide enough cover for FHM to exist in the same pond as LMB.

So my pond is an experiment with FHM, one experiment that likely will fail. But either way, we have the opportunity to learn from it on my dime of time and energy. That is the way I see it. And like any other hobby, the time and energy will only be wasted if I did not enjoy what I was doing. But I sure did not do it to make money or because I hated doing it. So I must have enjoyed it. In fact, I'm pretty certain I did enjoy it.


John

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