Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Trout

Jdmcalf,

Here are your questions and my reponses:

How many pounds of fish food do you feed for the total weight of fish in the pond per day?

I may go through only one bag of 40 or 50 pound feed a month for my trout. I only put in up to about 100 total trout of three species per year, although I may be upping that as demand picks up. My fish are already a pound when I put them in with a few exceptions. So for total poundage you actually feed larger fish less than smaller fish. I'm really not sure what my carrying capacity is in this pond with the flow through and use of aerators but I do monitor oxygen and ammonia. I purposely made it deep for its surface area and relatively small to keep it from warming up to fast. I will be experimenting with suspending shade cloth over the pond this summer to reduce warming even more.

My biggest expense is the electricity, and when I am pumping well water it runs about a hundred U.
S. dollars a month. I try to hold off on pumping well water until May, and can stop pumping in early October.

Also for tax purposes do you write off all expenses in raising these fish?

I include the fish supplying business in with my taxidermy business and right off supplies, fish feed, the whole works as expenses. Don't know if that is right, but the wife does our taxes on a computer program and we haven't had any problems yet.

I don't know much about fee fishing although I have lots of friends that help harvest the fish by hook and line when I need to. (The list keeps growing!)I also have a list of folks that help with two weekends of highway cleanup that belong to our trout club, and they have first chance at the fish out. (The trout club has nothing to do with my pond)

I only fish the pond in the fall as I don't want to take the chance of stressing any of the fish before harvest, and that is when they are in their full spawning colors (all males). I have had people offer to pay me though.

Speaking of fee fishing, there is an interesting loop hole in my state that I could take advantage of if I was unsrupulous. The regs say I could enter any of my fish as a state record as long as I do not charge to fish my pond. I had one brook trout that came out of my pond a few ounces short of the state record (the one on the web page), and know I will probably have some state record size brook trout this fall. Do you think that would be fair to anglers that fish public lakes? I don't considering I feed them.

JD, I don't think diffusers are worthless though. Even if oxgen output is not as high as other aerators they serve one very important function. They mix the water column very efficiently and allow the break down of fish waste, and preclude any oxygen layer on the bottom etc. However it's possible that with my flow through of 51.6 F. water at 38 to 45 gpms that aerated water goes to the bottom and I wouldn't have an oxgen devoid layer. I don't know but I believe in the maxum if it ain't broke don't fix it and the trout made it through a hot summer last year.

diffusers also make the addition of beneficial bacteria more effecient and as Mike says they are more efficient in deeper water.

Surface aerators can have one disadvantage with trout. They can warm the water in hot weather more as it has more air contact. As Mike to some extent says, "It depends." There are pros and cons to everything.

I would love to see Mike do an article on his trout raising for the magazine too. However he has a business and may not want to devulge too many details for his competitors. But then again maybe not. I wouldn't mind doing an article myself just to show what I am doing too. Both articles would interesting to our neighbors to the north.