Hey green head! I'm still out here. Sometimes I wonder where that is, but I'm still here. Sorry it took so long to respond to you but I haven't been checking in lately. As far as my fertility program goes, I think it's still a little early to tell how its going. I fertilized three times last year with liquid 10-34-0. The local fertilizer company will sell this at a very cheap cost. The first application was 1.5 gal/surface acre and the next two were 1 gal/surface acre. I used a golf ball tied to fishing string (too cheap to buy a sechi disc) and most of the summer I couldn't see it at 18 inches. Whenever it got to the point where I could see it at 24 inches, I made another application of 1 gal/acre. I think I went a little overboard on the last treatment because a green scum formed on the surface and stayed around for about 1 week before it cleared up. (my wife wasn't happy because it looked terrible) I believe it has helped the growth of my fish. Bass stocked as fingerlings on July 9th, 2001 are now 14+ inches with the bigest at 15inches and man are they fat. The bluegill/redear were stocked as fingerlings in October of 2000 and they are now 7 inches long. Catfish stocked at the same time range are from 15 inches to 22 inches. This seems to be a little better than the average growth rates for newly stocked ponds in the area. I never had a problem with algea on the surface. My pond only gets about 4 acres of agricultural runoff, the rest is wooded. My banks are very steep and water gets to a depth of 3 feet very quickly. Because of this, I don't have any problems with rooted plants and hopefully never will. So far this spring, there is a lot of green algae on all of the submergerd wood. There isn't any algae floating on the top. I don't remember there being so much algae on the submerged wood last spring and wonder it has something to do with the fertilizing last year. The water is clear with a visibility of 3 feet of so. When the surface temps hit 60 degrees here in the next couple of weeks(presently 54 degrees) I plan to apply 1 gal of fertilizer per acre as I did last year. Hopefully this will get a good bloom going for when the bass and bluegill spawn. The real chalenge will be keeping the bass growing once they get to 16 inches. I'm still a rookie at this and would appriciate any advice or help anyone has to offer. My pond is located in south central Illinois aproximately 15 miles east of Effingham. \:\)