Wow!! Can't believe the wealth of information here.
I'm new to the forums here and just wanted to express my thanks to Bill Cody for a big part of my inspiration to build my new smallie pond.
I finished construction of my 3/4 acre pond mid summer this year and stocked Fatheads about 4 months ago and followed with yellow perch, redear and smallmouth about 90 days ago and just finished a 7 day trap net set that produced some amazing results in such a short period of time.
My issue here in NW KS is the very fine sandy loam soil type. I had to use soda ash as a sealing agent due to less than 3% clay particulates and I'm worried about water clarity issues long term for the SMB.. This pond is fed by well water through a 2" main run down on top of bottom seal with a riser to act as an augmentor if needed.
I stocked my SMB after about 2 months of fathead spawning and at 90 days, my SMB went from an average of 55mm to an average of 114mm for the sample. My largest was 141mm (about 5.5"). My SMB sample was relatively small at only 9 fish so maybe I'm ok but I noted my Redear went from ave 60mm to 135mm and yellow perch 95mm to 210mm ave. I have very minimal aquatic vegetation but literally several hundred ton of rock substrate in the form of large concrete chunk, 2-5" rock/rubble down to pea gravel. WR's of the SMB were low (90-ish) on the larger specimens to around 140 on the smaller fish sampled. Granted some of this could be my WR formulas were meant for 150mm + SMB. I'm hoping time will show a better sample of SMB but I'm wondering if water clarity is more of an issue than I think??
Disk reading has varied from 18" to 30" at the clearest.
If someone would have any suggestions, I'm very open to ideas.. I know this system is extremely young but the excitement is hard to hold back.
Last edited by Snipe; 08/11/19 09:19 PM.
