A week following the liming, I tested the ph and hardness and have great results to share. The pH was between 8.1 (site of liming) and 7.0 (furthest from site) and the hardness was 26-27 everywhere. This is up from 6.0 (+/- .1) and 12-13 respectively.
All of the fished seemed happy. Yesterday I added a log pile and created a marshy area out of some accidental mower ruts (no pictures of either).
I did snap some pictures of the rock piles I made last week (2000 lbs of #2 (1.5"-2")). They didn't show up but the piles are loaded with YOY LBM and BG.
Three rock piles. The third is very faint.
I expect the hardness to keep rising slowly. It'll be interesting to see where it stabilizes. Should I be shooting for a 50-200ppm concentration of carbonate for good fish growth? I'd like the habitat to get to a point that will support grass shrimp. In the less distant future, I hope to establish a GSH population.
We caught 3 LMB that were about 14"s and weight around .8 lbs. That'd be on undersize according to the size/weight chart but, as I understand it, they could be a little small after spawn. The bass I see hanging out under the fish feeder seem to be fat. I'll try and get a better population sample in a few months when they should have beefed up again.
We also caught some BG with the intent of establishing a population in a different BOW. I took it as an opportunity to survey the population. There seem to be a lot of BG in the 1-3" and a lot in the 7-9" range.
From the two samples, I deduce that the bass ran low on forage this past winter including most BG between 3 and 6 inches. The big BG survived and spawned the only other significant tier of BG, the <2" guys. This all occuring bc of the water drawdown that exposed all of the available cover. Am I way off by assuming that the 1-2" BG came from the earlier spawns of the year? Thoughts?
