Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Restoring a bluegill pond

I've been so busy working on projects around the house the last year I haven't had a ton of time to spend at the pond. I cleared our walking path trail a few weeks back and have done a little bit of fishing with my youngest son (7) while my oldest sons (13 and 15) have been maintaining the boats and keeping an eye on things.

Bullhead numbers are way down! In fact, they're getting harder to trap so I'm building another cloverleaf to help out. We have a couple of cone style net traps running without much luck.

I have still not seen many, or any, HSB - haven't caught one either. YP also seem to be gone or very good at hiding and avoiding a hook. The LMB are on fire! They seem to be doing a decent job of picking off smaller fish and the average size increase of our crappie and BG are proving that. I haven't been feeding the fish for a while now but will start back up here in a couple of weeks. It is a great gauge on the size and numbers of fish in the pond by spotting what readily takes the feed. Feeding over traps also helps to trap stunted gills and bullheads

Cleared 800' of 8-12' wide trail down to the pond over the weekend....the trail wasn't too bad but hadn't been touched in a couple of years. Now we can get our ATV's on site to do more work.



Plan for this fall/winter is to improve trails/access, trap and fish!