The very poor test I did for clarity involved white cloth ( part of a Tee shirt actually
but disappeared each time around the 10" mark, which I think from what I have read is just to poor, but maybe I am off base? We are trying to make a proper Secchi disk now with the help of the information provided by you folks, although I frankly do not expect to drastically different results, I sank nearly a whole Tee shirt and the green swallowed it up quickly! I just added about 400,000 thousand gallons and I walked down to the pond a few minutes ago and noticed that as usual, it is somewhat better now than it will be in a week, when it will return to the normal shade.
By the way, I decided to walk a complete circle around the edge of the entire pond because when I got to the first part, I noticed a bunch of extremely small minnows all hugging the shoreline and taking off as I got close. That prompted me into the walk, ( which I am paying for now and will for the next 3 days
and I discovered that nearly every inch of the shoreline is full of what must be untold thousands of them, they hung every square inch of the shoreline. I do not normally see fish this small, usually they are considerably larger when I see them, I have NO idea what they are, did not even think they were fish until I got a good look at one.
Whatever they are, they must be a very recent spawn. I am not sure what would do that this time of the year in such massive numbers, but I THINK it must be the BG or less likely the FHM. I will try and capture a few and take a photo and see if anyone can identify them for me, they are extremely small now, perhaps 1/4" and look like water fleas or bugs at a distance but they are not, I keep on them until I was able to confirm, they are definitely fish, many thousands of them.
I think I have mentioned this before, but one thing this green, algae filled pond does really well is support the smaller food chain. I have always had huge numbers of small fish at all times of the year except under ice, and they swim all over the pond in large numbers or as singles, with apparent impunity from being gobbled up. I have watched so many times a group of FHM or baby BG just swimming around in the deep water or out in the open, no cover anywhere, playing with a piece of floating food or a bug, leaf, etc, and I have NEVER once see a single bass, larger BG or CC or anything grab one of them, even though they lounge around making such easy targets, especially for what I THINK must be hungry bass. I assume the BG and CC are content with the Aquamax, I have no idea why the other fish in the pond appear to have no interest in such easy pickings, some of the FHM are 3" and nice and fat, a good enough meal I would think for such skinny bass. As for the weights of the bass, I do not know. The picture you saw is one of only two that were ever caught in 7 years ( the other was the same size ) until this spring when my bass guy and his wife pulled out ( forgot exact number ) about 12-15 in a morning of fishing hard. But every bass they caught was identical in size and weight to the one in the picture, except I believe they were longer, but had no weight to them, no visible stomach at all.
I understand the thinking behind the larger bass in the pond not having much if any interest in fish that small for a meal, even if they are so skinny, but is that NOT the food chain for all the small bass I have that are about 6" in size and the larger BG, I thought this was the perfect size targets for fish of this size that are growing and need a food supply? Of course, I have to assume a lot of slaughter of these forage fish takes place under the surface, I guess it is just odd for me to see them have no fear of open, deep water on the surface, cause if a bug the same size or smaller hits the same area, holy smokes, it is game on! The surface action is so explosive I can only assume it is bass, but when we toss on a very large artificial floating grasshopper in an attempt to cash in on that action thinking we will surely finally catch a bass, we catch very large BG usually within a very few seconds. In years of trying this, we have never caught a bass this way, always really nice BG, although we can, on occasion, clearly see that it is bass ( for the most part ) that is actually nailing the bugs when they land in the water, the bass catch air and give us a look.
Thanks for the links, I can go full steam ahead now and complete the water sample and build and conduct a proper Secchi test. I appreciate all the help from everyone. As I read over my posts from the beginning, I realize that Stevie Wonder could do a better job with fewer questions than me, I am clearly a lost child in the dark, thanks everyone!
