IBF,

Always good to read posts from fellow East Texans! Yes, we need rain, lots of rain!

Reading your info, it sounds to me like you may be somewhat fish bio mass heavy as suggested by JayMan above. If the pond is down 3.5 feet, it is presumably somewhat less than a 1/4 acre now in surface area and certainly less than full capacity in total water volume.

A good guideline that is often used by A&M and Texas Parks & Wildlife for our ponds is stocking no more than 100 pounds of predators per acre. Also BG stocking rates are generally recommended at or below 1000 per acre for small BG.

The situation you described is something like 160 pounds per acre of adult predators and 1400 adult BG per acre at stocking...that's assuming 1/4 acre which is probably somewhat less now. So, according to those numbers and allowing for spawning of LMB and BG, you might be on the high side in fish bio mass. Lots of action around the aeration pump might also be an indicator of low DO due to the amount of fish in the pond.

The numbers are not huge or orders of magnitude out of line with the guidelines, but with the drought, low water levels, and limited flushing of water to improve water quality, could be a factor in what you are seeing.

Like a lot of Texas, we need some really good rains for our ponds. In my area, in the absence of a tropical event, the good rains won't be here for at least two or three months yet and with the heat our ponds will continue to loose water at high evaporation rates, which may exacerbate problems further.