I know you guys all seem to have alot more knowledge than me, but I have had a bad grass carp experience recently in one pond. I'll try to be brief (although I'm not real good at that if you've read any of my other postings!) but I need to give a little background.

The pond is a little over an acre and until a few years ago was pretty barren as far as plant life and big fish was concerned. It's steep walled, deep (still a nice 25 foot channel in it) surrounded by old timber and stays pretty cool all year round due to springs feeding into it from above. It's now about 25 years old and had, I think, about 15 white amur put in as part of the original stocking plan.

Maybe 4 or 5 years ago a HUGE carp came up dead one summer morning. This was about the same time I started getting actively involved in trying to manage it for larger fish. Within a year there were nice but not extensive water plants growing along the only sunny area, the dam. This also happens to be the only place cattails grow and there are only a few of them even though we don't do anything to control them - I just think the structure of the pond limits their range.

The year after that the plants were getting thicker but still not everywhere. Mostly just the south-facing dam, but a few in other shadier places. As expected, the fish population seemed to be growing in size. I decided to try something different to control the weeds and waded in and riped them out by the roots using mostly my feet to form channels in the middle of this new weedbed. This was pretty easy and not too bad of work on a summer day.

This worked well until last summer as far as I was concerned. We were catching 8-9 inch bluegill, 2-4 lb bass, and 10-14 inch crappie with some regularity and the weeds had spread a little but didn't seem to be much of problem to me - in fact that seemed to be the best place to catch fish! It seemed like the way the pond is built limited the water plant's suitable habitats.

Unfortunately, last summer the person who we share this property with had enough of pulling weeds off his lures and wanted grass carp added again. He said the local "expert" recommended 12-15 carp again but I tried to talk him into just 3 or 4 and we can put more later if we want. He "comprimised" and put in 10 about 10" long last May. By the end of June - maybe 6 weeks after the carp stocking - there was not a water plant in the whole pond other than the original cattail stand. The Christmas trees I had put in had previously been clumped over with mossy growth and they were now just skeletons. By later in the summer I even saw fresh green cattails floating in the water as though the carp were starving and even eating them.

I'm hoping that the lack of remaining food supply killed of some of them last winter, but I have seen some this year and I would say they were about 16-18 inches in length. There is still no plant life and the clarity of the water (I can see 7 feet down at times) makes the pond look like a virtual desert. I think it's a little soon to know how the fish populations are reacting but there are still larger fish being caught. I also have been more active again about adding christmas trees, rip-rap, a huge hollow log and other types of structures to compensate for the loss of plant-type structure.

Anyway, I don't know if any of this helps but it might serve as a warning about adding too many white amur in one year if you aren't sure. You can always put more in the next year if you haven't gotten your results yet.