Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Crawfish questions

John - It is a little early with cool water temps to be catching critters and fish in streams. Try again around the first week of June or early July to see if catching is any better.

+1 on the cool water. I put a minnow trap in 2 ponds on a clients place. One went in the forage pond that only has FHM and Papershells, the other went in a pond that has FHM and GSH in preperation for stocking predators this year.

One trap and 5x-6x the amount in the other trap. One trap had 2 Papershells, the other had 0. Would I say the one pond is low on forage? Nope, just too early to tell yet.

Cody and Esshup, I won't give up up trying to catch my crawdads. Maybe it was too early. I do want them as part of my pond ecology.

Out in BC where my Mom is now retired there was a lake that had some of the biggest average brown trout anywhere around. You could catch big brown trout with ease for years. The ministry got in there an banded house boats on the lake. The sanitary poopers were being dumped right into the lake. Guess what happened to the fishing after they stopped the dumping?

Yep the lake slipped in to a supper clear lake and in a few years all the feed was licked up by all the good size brown trout. It stunted the fish in the lake from over eating after three years.

Long story long some times super clear water is not the best for a fishery.

Cheers Don.

Have to agree its still cold water in the creeks, the spawning runs here, yellow perch and white perch were late. I will try to get one or two crayfish traps out this weekend, just to see what happens.

But I have been slaying the bull minnows, (mummichogs and killifish) Lots of them are the nice 3" ones.

Don, that's a classic for unintended consequences.