Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Buying a house with a pond..

Hello everyone!

I am new to the forums and have a few questions. I am buying a house with a small pond.

I would guess the pond to be 1/3 of an acre. It's not big by any means but it is full of fish. I see fish of all sizes. From what I have seen there are LMB and BG. The fish are all different sizes. I have on 2 different occasions seen a large bass aprox 16" in lenght. The largest BG I have seen aprox 8".

My question is what would you guys do if anything to this existing pond? The water looks good and green and I can see fish 3 feet under the water. The pond is well established at 10-15 years old.

Do you think I could add trout with the BG and LMB in there already? I know that trout were in it before.

The pond is 14' deep at deepest point. I have not checked the current depth yet. It could have silted in some over the years.

I know these may be hard questions to answer with limited info. I guess my main question is what would some of you do with this pond if it just happened to come with a house you bought?

Any ideas would be great! And, I am a fisherman that always wanted a pond. Who knows, maybe down the road I may build a bigger pond on some of the remaining 14 acres.

Thanks,

Brad

I would start collecting data, from day 1.
Put ewery thing in a log book.
When you have a complete overwiev off what you really have, you can decide iff you want to adjust towards any direction, within the limits of the pond.
Use a ful year at least (4 seasons),and just enjoy the ponnd.
Also map other ponds, near by you and get as much info on them as you can.

Well said Paul.

Brad, the log book that Paul mentions will substitute for computer analysis using a program that really doesn't exist. With a log you go from a general feeling about the pond to a complete picture. Log what you see, what you catch and what occurs around the pond.

I would also identify the water quality. Make a disk out of the top of a white 5 gallon bucket or something. Poke a hole through the middle, run a piece of cord through and tie on a weight. Lower it into the water and see when it disappears. measure that distance. To be healthy and ideally balanced with a planktonic base, it ought to disappear at 18 to 24 inches.

I don't think I would add anything to an existing pond with what sounds like healthy fish.

Oh yeah, welcome to the show.

Brad -- welcome to Pond Boss. You'll get lots of good reliable advice for your pond questions.

Paul and Dave are exactly right. I keep records of all fish being stocked and all fish that are caught, whether they go back in, or whether they are released. I use MicroSoft Excel to keep my data.

As for trout, you probably can keep them for at least part of the year, possibly all year with aeration. Without aeration, or even some type of water movement, your pond will stratify with the lower parts of the pond being deficient in oxygen. During the summer, the upper reaches with adequate oxygen may get too warm for the trout to survive. They will start to die out when the oxygenated water gets into the high 60s. Trout will not reproduce in the pond. I keep trout in my pond from mid-October until late May. They are a lot of fun to watch and catch.

Ken

Thanks a lot for the sugestions everyone. I'm looking forward to getting a lot closer look at the pond from all angles once the deal is done. I will post more later with some pics. It sure is a pretty setting right out the back door and off the deck about 30 feet. =)

Thanks again.

Of course it would depend on the budget. But if I could, I'd convert it to a year round trout pond. You have access to some of the best rainbow trout strains and triploids right there on the Hood River in Oregon. The prices for live fish are excellent.

Once I got the old fish out I'd start planting whatever minnows I could get there. The more the better. Then I would buy at least 12" or above trout. Triploids if I could. I'd buy a pellet feeder, and feed them until they would no longer eat. I'd eat the littler slow growers and keep growing the pigs. Then I'd get a fly rod or ultra lite spinning and fish for 10 lb+ trout. And let them go, and do it all over again.

But it's your pond, what do you want to do, and more importantly, what is your budget for pond improvement? Does not sound bad now. Just on the smaller side. There are so many ways to go I could not even list them all.

Thanks Frog,

I re-read your post and seen you asked a question. My budget is not to bad, I could throw a few thousand dollars at it if I had to.

I don't really think I will need to though, it is a pretty nice pond, just a little small, but really about the right size for where it is behind the house. I know it used to have trout all year, I have a well that is used for keeping the pond clean and to keep the water moving through it during the summer months. In the wet months it has a creek that feeds it and an out flow to another creek downhill.

I think I have a good base to work with here but I would like to add some trout to it as well. What I would like to know is if I ate a few of the larger bass and bluegill, could I add trout in it without them getting eaten up to much if planted as fingerlings?

I have a plan down the road to possibly build a larger pond on some of the remaining property, maybe an acre or bigger (after the new house is built of course). I will have about 12 acres of property left over. Good clay soil, lots of ponds around here and a big (almost year round) creek to overflow into.

Any other suggestions are very much wanted from everyone =) Please give me more things to think about.

Thanks again,

Brad

Depending on the size of your LMB, the fingerling trout might or might not become expensive snacks. LMB can and will eat fish up to 1/3 their body length, especially fusiform shaped ones like trout.

If you add water from the well, see if you can run it over something (a small rocky faux streambed would work) to bounce the water around, exposing more of it to the atmosphere. That will allow it to degas and add oxygen.

Thats for sure. if your willing to do a bit more work you could raise them in a cage in the pond until they get large enough to survive. There is info on what it takes to make a cage here, not much to it.

http://www.gcswcd.com/publications/trout.pdf
http://aqua.ucdavis.edu/DatabaseRoot/pdf/ASAQ-C13.PDF
I would still wait/study habitat before making changes.
The above links gives you a guide on trout.

Hello Bobberdown (great screen name) and welcome to Pond Boss. Pond Frog asked you a question within a question...



What do you want to do? Or put another way what goals do you have for the pond? Seems like you want trout, is that the fish that you would most like to have?

If you are planning on adding another pond then you have so many options. On two occasions I was able to sneak onto Bob Lusk's beautiful property. He, like several others here on Pond Boss, have multiple ponds. This brings about a variety of choices. You can have the two different ponds stocked with entirely different fish and therefore expand your on-property fishing experience significantly.

You know that you already have BG and LMB in the existing pond. Perhaps you would want to save the trout for a new pond, perhaps not, but you see where I'm going with this. Your second pond could have significantly different fish than the first pond.

Hopefully some of our multiple pond owners will chime in, Theo? Cecil? Everyone else that owns multiple ponds whom I am forgetting due to a lack of caffeine or mental stability?