Here is a question I am wrestling with as far as forage and vegetation. I have a pretty serious infestation of curly leaf pond weed. Right now I probably have about 85% of the 3/4 acre pond with CLPW growing. My pond is also sensitive to periods of low rainfall. Last summer, it got fairly dry and the pond probably dropped two feet. Right now the pond is up full, lots of cover in the cattails and bulrushes, lots of cover in the pond with the CLPW. But then July and August will come along, the rains slack off and the pond begins to drop, reducing shoreline cover. At the same time CLPW enters into the phase where it typically dies back in the summer. Now I am in a situation where all the cover I once had is pretty much gone. All the forage is desperately trying to hide in the few spots where I built structure. I assume some of the forage got a little bit of size while they had cover but now probably only a lucky few survive. Any late season spawn probably has zero chance of survival. Of course, it is possible that rainfall continues to be adequate and I don't have the depth fluctuation I had last year and cattails will continue to expand in the shallows if I do nothing to stop them. So how do I gauge the effect of these cyclical changes in a management scenario regarding chemicals and GC? I am refining my goals based on what I read. I think what I want is to keep an area about 40 ft square clear of weeds via mechanical measures for a little swimming spot that will be used infrequently, and to have a nice healthy BG population, not necessarily lunkers but good size, good numbers, but not overpopulated, fun to catch and good in the pan. I think I might also open up a few lanes with the weed cutter so I have some spots where I have cover edges that I can exploit for fishing from the shore. Bass and CC are kind of secondary, they are there mostly to be predators. I have no idea what I will get from the 6 GC I have in there or how they will be affected by the cycle described above. I will just have to watch as it develops. Maybe I need to toss in some more brush so that the cover in the pond does not bounce between such extremes?
