Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Fish down the drain

After a 3 day heavy rain, I found hundreds of small bluegill (1" - 4") in the pasture area
below my pond's spillway areas. There are about
35' of flat emergency overflow areas on each side of the dam and a 12" siphon pipe which
feed into the creek below the dam. I'm guessing
that the observed fish were only about 10% of
what I didn't see. Would some type of screening
across the overflow area create more problems
that it would solve ? Any better solution to
this problem ?

I found the same thing a few years ago but they went into the drainage ditch and we were able to get quite a few back to the pond. My overflow is small only 4 ft wide and 4 inches deep (small pond .4 acres excavated) but now I have a screen made from folded hardware cloth and covered with fish netting that I keep in the overflow. The only drawback is that I have to constantly empty it of leaves especially in the fall but since I like to walk around the pond every night it is not much of an inconvience. It has stopped the problem of fish heading out the overflow.

Bob

My experience has been that most fish never get near enough to flow out. Fish rather swim upstream, not downstream. Notice the fish you find are small, usually young of the year. While small fish can go, it's not enough to disrupt your population.