Fish Omaha; Fish in private ponds become hook shy pretty quickly. To keep that from happening, I severely limit the fishing in my ponds including me, friends and family. Most of us put a pretty high value on privacy and quiet times.
The fee to let the public fish would have to be pretty obscene.
We start with purchasing land. Not just any land but land suitable for retention of or impounding water. It has to be a big enough parcel for runoff from rains to be impounded. It also has to have the right loamy soil to hold together for a dam. Expensive! Buying land that has a good sized pond/ponds? Even more expensive!
Once we have the right land, we begin constructing a pond. There is nothing cheap about moving dirt with a dozer. Expensive!
Wait for rains. Inexpensive!
Finding that the pond leaks and needs repair. Expensive!
Checking water quality for suitability as a place for fish too live. Not too expensive but more than most people have left over from monthly pay check.
Finally, we buy fish and stock them. We buy babies and wait for them to grow up so we can fish for them. That takes several years. This is the cheapest part of the picture.
Most of us choose to feed our fish. In my case, on my small ponds, that's about $100 to $150 per month.
After all of the above, we get to fish our pride and joy. But, not as often as we would like. As stated above, fish in private impoundments can get hook shy pretty quickly. So, we have to ration our enjoyment. To provide a quality opportunity for the public, we would have to limit it severely. Nobody would pay to fish where the decent sized fish have learned what the foot steps on the bank mean. And then, we couldn't enjoy it either. At this point, I ration my friends and family(including me) to no more than once a month.
To sum it up, it would be neither financially feasible nor personally rewarding to let the public fish our ponds. I've often compared this to leasing out my unused spare/guest bedroom.
Last edited by Dave Davidson1; 05/05/16 05:26 AM.
