Just an example of how fish can move into other BOS's.
I dug a very small pre-sediment pond (maybe 20'wide by 40' long with my backhoe to catch some sediment before it reaches my 1/10 acre sediment pond. No fish in it. It has about a 30' section of dry land covered in 3" rock that when it overflows the water runs into my sediment pond. Has probably a 4" differential in water level (full pool is 4" above full pool in sediment pond.
I throw in a hand full of FHM in this otherwise clean small pond. Plan was to get a hundred or so fingerling tilapia to grow up big enough to put them in my main pond. Put the tilapia in when the water temp got warm enough. So tilapia and FHM is all I stocked in this tiny pond.
We had a fairly large rain event, Nothing huge but enough for the water to pass through this pre-sediment pond into the sediment pond and on into the main pond. Just like it is supposed to. The water going out of the pre-sediment pond into the sediment pond maybe reached a maximum depth of 2 inches. Sediment pond has CNBG and RES that must have got off a late spawn last fall when I put fingerlings in.
I'm looking at this small pre-forage pond and notice what looks like something other than tilapia or FHM. Throw in a minnow trap and pull out a dozen or so CNBG. The 1" fingerlings that undoubtedly came from last fall spawn had swam the 30' against a pretty significant current up hill into this pre-sediment pond. It being such a small pond and not wanting to over crowd the tilapia with too much biomass and get a fish kill in this tiny pond, started trapping out the extra CNBG with an occasional RES. Trapped over 200 of these fingerling fish that had swam upstream. Got most of them. Had another rain event a few weeks later. Trapped a few hundred more 1-2" CNBG and RES and moved to the main pond. Did not care that a few were in this pond. Just wanted to keep the biomass from going crazy and having a fish kill as the tilipia were growing like crazy.
Point is to this long winded story, I was amazed at how many and how small of fish went against current up stream in pretty darn shallow water.
According to my older brother (about 75), he says LMB and bullheads will get in any pond that has an overflow into any nearby creek. Even if it is a seasonal creek, it will happen during floods. I don't know if he is correct, but I have seen bullheads crawl 20' back into the water when I threw them up on the old pond bank. Although I had a hard time fully agreeing with my brother, I can not dismiss what he says after seeing what gusto small fish have for swimming upstream to get to a new BOW. He claims BH can swim in an inch of water flow against current through standing grass. He may be right. He claimed he knew of a number of ponds that were never stocked that ended up with BH, GSF and LMB that way.
They sure seem to get into ponds somehow.
Last edited by snrub; 08/04/15 10:28 AM.
