Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Ice gone yet on your ponds?

Getting there!

ice gone march20,

Ponds are still covered here but the stream inflow and outflow is open. Ducks are enjoying the open water now.

Dwight, have you shut down your aerator now that you have open water?

Russ - I removed it last weekend. I was concerned that the ice movement could damage it.

It sits safely in the warehouse.

Thanks for the welcome back Russ. I haven't been gone just lurking and trying to absorb all the knowledge this site has.

Ice gone 3/25/07 about 2pm. Now to get rid of those dang muskrats!

Good luck, Fozzy..

Saturday 3-17 I spotted the first one swimming around in the 3 to 5 foot of open water between the shorline and the ice. Since then there has been a total of 7. Interesting, they were all males.

Keep after them, "cause they just keep 'a commin"

Dan

Cecil:

Even though I'm 150 miles north of you, my ice was gone on March 9th on all ponds.

FWIW, I've had no problem carrying redears through the winter. We put about 500 1-inch fingerlings in the frog pond 3-years ago and I'm still transplanting 6+inch fish whenever I can catch them. Can't document reproduction in the other ponds as of yet. The redears do tend to create their own spawning beds away from the bluegills, which are visible with our clear water.

Steve, I bet you're pond's pretty close to Lake MI. Big water temperature moderation has a huge effect on climate, and hence RES survival, in the LP.

Theo:

You're right on only about 10-miles east from the lake. The other factor is that my ponds are near the base of a 30-foot dune that was the former margin of glacial Lake Michigan about 10,000 years ago. We get a tremendous amount of groundwater recharge from the hill. We have to be careful with the ice because it melts very quickly from the bottom.

Maximum ice thickness this year was about 10-inches and it was never good hard ice.

So Theo, are the Bucks going to do it this time?

Dwight -- when I got back from the Pond Boss conference last night, our ice was GONE!

My pond is still about 2/3 covered. I did try wetting a line in the 1/3 that was open and the crappie were biting. With the warm weather they are predictin I expect to have ice out in about a week which is two weeks early.

Dave Willis – Our ice departed on Sunday. In the morning we had 40% coverage - water-logged ice. The wind came up from the southeast and then went to west. By 1400 hours there was no evidence there was ever any ice here!

The weather is weird here. Unseasonably warm (May weather) and not only are my perch shooting eggs but the bass are spawning at the same time! I've never seen that before. Pond temps are up in the 60's F but we had ice two weeks ago. Am I dreaming? We are supposed to stay this way all week! It just feels sureal. I know one can get unseasonably mild temps this time of year, but usually it only lasts a few days and is accompainied by severe thunderstorms. The air is too dry for that for the most part here.

I don't know about you other guys up here in the north but this winter was one of the strangest I experienced too. First half was well above normal and then the second half was well below normal. Sure hope we don't get some wicked weather out of all of this!

We've got egg strands like three weeks before last year. I found six yesterday and my pond's surface temperature was already 60 degrees. I didn't hit that until about May 1st last year.

Our winter temperatures were warm early then frigid and then very warm late. On average the winter temperature was normal though the big temperature swings didn't make it feel very normal.

Bruce,

Thought of a couple of questions after I left to ask you.

1.) Are you intentionally mixing male and female yellow perch in your outdoor pond?

2.) What do you fertilize your bluegill reproduction pond with?

I think I recall you are planting the fastest growers which most likely are females but I don't remember for sure.

To my knowledge I don't have any male yellow perch currently on my property. I hope to keep it that way, but one never knows.

My bluegill reproduction pond sits directly below my Morton building. This is naturally the most fertile pond that I've got because it catches the runoff from the original construction site, and it also catches all of the outflow from the Po'Boy RAS and the waste contained therein.

I'm taking bluegill from ponds that are known age-2 bluegill, then selecting the best ten males and females. Then I'm selecting another ten males and ten females from the age-3 and age-4 ponds. Then I mix them together and see what I get.

The pond gets dewatered every fall to assure no carryovers.

I'll cut and paste this response to the bluegill thread.