So for those that have been following this, or may run across similar trash fish and water quality issues in the future, I wanted to do a quick update. For 20 years now I've been fighting this issue seemingly making no headway. The smart thing to do would've been to rotenone my pond and start over. But being hard headed and overly confident in my abilities to manage my pond, I forged ahead attempting every possible method available. Well, to my amazement I've made massive headway on my water clarity issues. For 19 years I've ran between 4-6" of water clarity due to suspended clay. Earlier in the summer I began noticing a significant improvement and measured it with secchi disk at 11.5". Last weekend I came home and noticed a significant jump in clarity, and measured it this Tuesday at 15.5". And now last night I measured it at 24"!!! I guess I bring this to the board to see if anyone has good ideas why this may be. For that discussion I'll run down what I've been doing for management.....
1) Began stocking Blue Cats in fall of 2015. Right now the largest appear to be about 4-6lbs. Although I'm almost certain I have less than 100 of those at that size in 15 acres. 2) I've began a seining program in which we've removed nearly 700 channel cats and 250 common carp (in the last 13 months) both averaging about 1.5lb per fish. Now this seems like a bunch, but in a note of transparency I'm noticing more carp spawning and at my feeder than I've ever noticed in the past. I honestly don't think this has made a significant impact. 3) I've began a much more intense feeding program of my channel catfish, going thru about 3000lbs of feed per year, and 5000lbs of trout guts. I have a signigicant amount of catfish now over the 5lb mark that presumably have become more piscivorous and may be limiting smaller carp reproduction.
Now I'm assuming its a combination of all of the above that is leading to an improvement in water clarity. But what's puzzling to me is the sudden improvement. Maybe someday I'll figure it out. Either way, here's a few videos for reference. I'm assuming I have videos from last year above of similar feeding scenarios and there's a dramatic difference in water quality.
