Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Bob's Blog Question?

Bob asked our opinion on what we would do in this situation:

Does anyone have an opinion?

Dad-gummit it PFF when I saw the title I thought you were going to start off with a carefully thought out and researched professional opinion. :rolleyes:

Duh! I would get out my checkbook and hire Bob and Otto to do the job; while I manned the barbecue pit and the cooler (this is where my expertise lies)! How is that for well thought out? :rolleyes:

Awlright, I�ll take a stab, if anything else, y�all can tell me how far off base I am and sorry about the questions on questions.

Fish Kill?
If he�s concerned about his fish dying, what options does he have? Does he have the resources to seine and move to another pond somewhere? Does he have a supplemental water source? What happened last year? It sounds like he thinks the pond will completely dry out.

Survivors and population dynamic?
Depends on management goals and resources. If you are managing for maximum carrying capacity, and you have a pond in a Mediterranean climate, you better have supplemental water. My (limited) experience with warm Mediterranean climate ponds that lose significant volume over summer, but maintain enough capacity for survivability, is that the surviving populations really blossom when the pond fills back up. If one doesn�t care about maxing out the pounds per acre, droughts are a good way of keeping your surviving fish from stunting. Overall much lower populations, but high quality fish. The strongest have made it through the summer, and with the winter and spring rains, full pool, everybody is happy, active, and ready to re-populate, kind of a mixed blessing.

Water Quality?
Hard to answer without some knowledge of watershed (water and soil chemistry). Iow, seems it would depend a lot on what type of water there is to begin with (and what kind of soil it interacts with). My water quality has stayed really nice this summer despite the toll of evaporation. Does he or can he aerate?

Where to put dirt?
What would I do? Re-use the pond soil.
The ideal scenario would be 3 pieces of equipment. Track hoe the dirt, wheel loader (or dump truck) to spreading site, dozer to spread. Long pushes with a dozer aren�t efficient. Pond soil is good stuff, people pay a lot of money for topsoil (around this area anyway).

I have seen pics of that beautiful blue water pond , I know better.

You are right that Bob's question is big and tough to address.

A few thoughts :

1 -- I would want to be sure that any dirt work did not cause a leak.

2 -- I don't know about costs on dirt work but I would lean toward using the dozer to clean out at the edge down to 2 ft and the track hoe for bottom structure. First be sure the bottom is hard enough -- you don't want to get the dozer or hoe stuck.

3 -- If I had access to aeration I would get some started in several locations but not from the bottom but from about 3 feet. Try to keep the top 3 feet loaded with O2 until more water or cold weather or both. If low alkalinity I would add some ag lime (a little at a time) to the water to improve its buffering ability and help with water quality. A good time to lime the dry areas including some in the feeder creek.

4 -- If O2 is ok fish will survive assuming he gets some water. If water goes down and fish are crowding I would start catching the larger fish . See if you can trade them for fish later on. If and when the pond fills the remaining fish will increase spawning and growth to fill the ponds carrying capacity . If needs arise then later use your credit to fix the situation.

5 -- I would leave the weeds alone for now - a good source of O2 and shade to keep temps down. If they are to crowded I would hand remove some by boat.

Who's next !!!

I'd be removing as many fish as possible that weren't the most desirable - mid-sized bass if managing for large bass, small & medium bream if it was me personally. As the water volume contracts, there will be less food for some species (BG, I think) and more for others (bass & other predators). So catch rates for hook and line would go up for bream removal, if I thought all this out correctly. Catching bass might be harder in this situation, but then the largest bass will help reduce numbers of the smallest ones.

WRT the removed dirt, I'd find the closest place to the pond to put it where I could spread it out and let it dry (and, I assume, contract in volume over the next year or two). Then seed it with grass and keep the livestock off of it until I get good sod established.

Track-hoe, two dump trucks, and a small dozer.

The track-hoe can easily keep two dump trucks busy, especially if the location for the dirt is very close by. The small dozer is needed to spread the fill dirt and finish up the entire area.

I've used this approach myself with success. I provided the small dozer and hired the other equip. With good operators, you can move a tremendous amount of dirt in a short time. Also economical...we moved an estimated 3500 yards over a weekend for a cost of about $2k.

so what was the final consultation?

He hasn't decided, yet. Still looking at equipment, but looks like he will choose trackhoe, rubber-tire loader and two dump trucks to move dirt and rearrange the upper reaches of his lake. I'll let you know what he decides.