Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Weekly Observations

If you get the weather that they are saying that we'll see next weekend, the data from 2 weeks from now will be interesting.

Ice is still building !

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Still making ice huh? Time to get back out there and go fishing!

+ 1/2 inch in a week during February means spring is on the horizon.

D.O. readings are excellent for this date under 26 inches of ice.

When the water is happy, everybody is happy!

Record ice thickness with D.O. still good.

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How about a betting pool for the ice out date?

Ice is off the large pond completely and things look fine. See some FHM in the shallows. In the small pond in front of the house some bluegill died. I saw maybe a hundred floating but it still has some ice on it except for about 5 feet out around the edge. I saw none on the bottom but I can only see bottom a couple feet out. Strange, but a lot of the dead ones are are still frozen in the ice that is left instead of under it. I didn't see any YP floating but there weren't many in there anyway. I didn't see any of the big bluegill dead either. These were all the same size and I'm sure they are from HBG I stocked last spring.

Turn out the lights, the party is over. The ice building party, that is.

We have some relatively warm days and nights coming next week. All of the melting ice and snow runoff will cause the Rock River to rise. When the Rock rises the ground water pressure increases beneath the pond and it beings rising too. This warm weather activity will reverse the ice building process and start the ice decaying process.

This, I like!

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Spring finally ?

You can really see the effects of running the circulator full time. It has mixed the pond enough that D.O. is similar top to bottom. The effect on water temperature is less pronounced because of that big block of ice floating on the surface.

I checked ice thickness in the normal location. Then, checked several other locations. Ice is about the same thickness everywhere except near the shore and near the open area around the circulator.

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I'd say the pond just turned over by looking at the temps, and by the bottom DO reading.

You may want to refer to my previous week's commentary.

I guess it could be called turnover. I think of it more as mixing caused by the circulator running continuously along with the influx of ground water from beneath the pond.

Almost constant mixing in the lake. Not a DO related turnover as in most ponds.

Agreed.

Monitoring commenced on April 9, 2009. Around that time Dr. Dave Willis and I discussed the idea of monitoring Bremer Pond on a weekly basis for one year. That soon turned into two, three, four and now 5 full years.

Dr. Dave is gone. Continue on? Call it done?

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I vote for continue, but I'm not doing the work. I think it's interesting to see.

What would Dr. Dave want?

Keep it up and keep looking for clues to unlock all the mysteries. There is a lot yet to learn and lots of puzzle pieces to match !

Pond still 30-35% covered with a floating ice mass that moves from area to area depending on the wind direction. Went ahead and moved to open water, observation-wise.

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How is the water level ? Is it melting the ice ?

Just a local observation, but ponds that run lengthwise East to West are open. Ponds that run lengthwise North to South, still have ice cover. Our winds mostly come from the West.

We don't need any more water at this time.

I did get the weekly readings last week and will do them this weekend after the whitecaps subside. Busier than a one legged man in a butt kicking contest! Will be posting it all up early in the week.

Wind slowed down; got er done.
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