Hi everyone. I finally got a chance to get out to the pond and do a little check up. I tried to do a water test with my pool kit but that didn't quite work out as planned. The only thing I got a good measurement on was the alkalinity is between 25-50 ppm. I ordered a full pond water test kit and a second one for alkalinity and hardness testing.
So the pond is about 3' low - the lowest I have seen it. I decided to do a little flyover with my Christmas present and give everyone a good look at the pond. The cool thing is with a polarized filter and the shallow water, you can see the shallow areas really well. Check it out and see what you think.
Lake Flyover You will notice the round spots on the bottom of the lake in the video. I checked these areas to find out what they were while exploring for vegetation. I only found 2 plants in the water and both of them are like grass. The one that shows up in the video is a grass that grows close the the bottom and almost looks like moss until it is disturbed. This was by far the most common vegetation I found. The other grass -pic labeled pond grass tall- was found spread around but not in big clusters like the other. Any help identifying these and determining if they could become a problem is appreciated.
I only managed to get 25 Christmas trees so I have revised my structure plan to reflect my first steps. The trees will be concreted into 5 gallon buckets and dropped in clusters standing upright. The plan is to line the drop-off in one area with trees being 2 or 3 wide. I am also working on a plan to tie the bedding areas to the standing trees to make the "yoy highway" but I haven't figured exactly how I want to do that yet.
I hope to get my water test kit next week and get back out to the lake before next weekend to test again. Hopefully I can get that data back up here to get some recommendations on what plants would be best for the bedding areas. Anything else you think I should check on my next trip, let me know.
The electrofishing should happen March-April and I am excited to see that and finally get a solid plan together for stocking.
