Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Too much cover?

I built a new pond a couple years ago. Dammed up a ravine. Left lots of trees and brush. Stocked LMB SMB BG HBG RES. So now this spring I cant catch hardly anything. No sign of winter kill. So my question is: could I have too much cover?

Well I guess the first thing I would ask is how big is your pond? Have you tried throwing a texas rigged worm up in the brush? Zing a small buzz bait by it. Heck maybe your fish are just being fed to well?

I found that creating habitat which you do need is kind of a catch 22 with brush! The fish love it and it looks great but they hunker down in the middle of it where you cant get to them!!

And who knows maybe you just had a couple of bad fishing days. You want to see if you still have fish in there. Try this. I got this tip form a guy here and it's worked for me big time!

Catch a couple of small BG 2 to 3 inch and put them on a hook with a bobber about 18 inches up. All I can say is just be ready! It works!!

Last weekend I could not catch a thing on artifical bait. I did this little trick had 5 bites and caught to nice bass!

RC

How big is the pond, max depth and ave depth? You will not leave enough trees and brush woody cover in the ravine to be too much cover especially after two years where you cannot catch very many fish. A lot of brush will deteriorate in two years. Something else is remiss. IMO you may have had poor stocking survival or a winterkill which is not always apparent.

the pond is 4 acres, 27 ft deep. steep banks. I am an avid fisherman. It seems to me that the BG should bite a worm in May-June. Also nothing comes to the feeder. I agree that it could be poor stocking survival. I also know many fish sink with a winterkill.
It does seem that more brush will deteriorate with time- so maybe there wont be too much cover in year or two.
I will try catching something again soon - but if no improvement then I have to figure out why the stocked fish died.

Also very doubtful about having too much woody brush cover. I would believe that too much cover is possible for weeds but not brush and trees. BG should be spawning in the gravel spawn beds which I assume that you added. It is always a good idea to sample the fish community by various methods every fall before winter season so you know the status of the fishery.

If the pond does not have strong stream flow through and you do not have aerators in the deep bottom areas then the pond is thermally stratified after Memorial Day at your latitude. If you are an avid fisherman you should have an electronic thermometer to determine the thermocline. Locate your thermocline which should be around 8'-10' deep maybe 7 ft deep?. Deeper water than that will not have any fish in it this time of year and especially in July-Aug and don't bother fishing in those areas below the thermocline because almost always there will be no oxygen below the thermocline. IMO in a deep pond you should not have had a winterkill unless the winter was very severe or there was lots of dead wood & organics decaying and consuming DO during snow cover.