Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Muskrat Question

I remove every muskrat I see in summer & think I removed them all. Then every spring walking the edge of my pond I find the damaging tunnels the rats leave from under the ice. I realize they have gone nocturnal so I just dont see them, But my question is would placing aeration disk in the shallows increase muskrat activities? Anyone experience this?

In my large pond this past winter, they were able to keep an area open through pretty regular usage and it was not at all uncommon to see at least 3 of them sitting on the ice at the edge of the hole at any given time. They kept it open on all but the coldest days and that appeared to be almost exclusively their base of operations above water. So, I guess while it may not in and of itself increase activity, I'd suspect it would certainly make their activity a lot more noticeable if they had a big hole to access whenever they wanted.

We have a circulator running in our pond during the winter. The circulator keeps the area around our dock and barge open all winter long.

Our experience is similiar to Todd, in that muskrats use the open water area on a daily basis.

You could bait them with a Killer-Cocktail around the open water area of trap them if you want to try and get rid of them. They are lot more active in the winter then I expected.

We have taken up with a live and let live policy on our property unless things start getting out of hand. At that point the guns will begin blazing or other corrective action will be in order.

If they were PVC rats I could help.

I have heard the story of your PVC animal marksmanship.

How are you doing?

pullo:

No the aeration disc will not increase the activity. They are active under the ice, using air bubbles under the ice to breathe in.

They will get out on top of the ice during the winter just like you and I would get out of the house after being cooped up for a while.

Muskrats are very easy to trap even under the ice. Find their runs and place a "colony/ box" trap (some people call them muskrat traps) in the run and you can catch multiple rats at one time. The traps are very easy to make!

seantOH

muskrats have caused damage every winter, they have trenched 20 feet up into our yard & made a den. I found a dip in the yard in spring & When I walked on it it was spongy, I poked the dip with a shovel handle & it went all the way to the shovel end! I opened it up & the hole was huge you could see twigs & reedy stuff in it & tunnels! took 5 wheel barrows to fill & it still keeps sinking in. I ended up finding another den just as big ten feet away! I was thinking if I placed the aerator next to my shore it would just invite them to do more damage, this is wh it is open season on any I see!.

If the run is too short to use the colony traps, use a 110 bodygrip i.e. Conibear.

Muskrats, Eurasian Water Milfoil and Cattails are the 3 things that I have a 0 tolerance policy for my pond.

This time I bought some conibear traps to try out anywhere I see a run.

THey work well. Put them as close to the opening as you can, without them hitting the opening when they are tripped. If you have problems withthem tipping over, or an empty trap, you can push a small rod or stick along the edge of the trap (inside the jaws) to keep it upright, or push a larger stick thru the round hole in the spring.