Well tonight the goldfish win. I had the seine net across the shallows and they were getting bold enough to hang out between shore and the net. I hand feed and there are 40-50 of them slurping up pellets. I also see perch and can also recognize a few 'slaps' of the RES coming in for pellets.
My son on one end, me on the other end of this heavily weighted, 50 foot seine. We tug furiously to try to pull them in. I can see gold streaks going every which way and man can they swim fast if they need to. We get it up on shore and somehow we have about 10 perch, 1 RES, a bunch of perch minnows, a turtle egg, a few huge ghost shrimp and ZERO goldfish.
I'm thinking that since the seine is long that the middle section might have had the bottom balloon out and flip inside out as we were towing it rapidly. I may have to put a rope to the bottom strand of netting and have a 3rd person pull in the middle and pull that rope in to be sure the bottom part of the net in the middle of the 50 foot length comes in just ahead of the top part? Perhaps go in a little slower since speed isn't so important if both ends are up on shore and they have no where to go.
Of course they are probably going to be shy for a few days, but nothing to do but reposition the net and start feeding for a few days again. It is amazing how they do condition to the feeding. I've been pumping water into the pond and the water is really clear now. You can see swarms of orange in the shallows and they seemed to not mind us watching them eat.
I'm also thinking maybe the thing to do is to have a stake out in the water at the mid point of the net so that the far end is on shore, the middle is staked, and the part from near end to the middle can hinge on the middle stake. Then the near end and the far end which are on shore could be pinched towards the stationary stake in the middle (like the pages of a book closing towards the middle) and they at least would be trapped in the middle.
Other are pros with the seine nets, ideas? I did go and add more of those home made cement weights to the middle section of the net to help keep it down as we are pulling it.
