Cont.
One of our corgis watching a squirkey sandwich
T
Two days before we closed on the home, I tried fishing the pond for the first time. I caught 2 hybrids both about
8 inches. The third fish I hooked hit like a ton of bricks and I thought it was one of the large bass in the pond
the prior owner had told me about. He used to have Boy Scouts that would have jamborees on the property where they would camp out. They would catch and release fish in the pond. The large bass that had been caught by them he told me was just shy of 7 lbs, which is huge for Mich.
I finally got the fish to the surface and was amazed at the size of the hybrid. I walked off the small dock to beach it, as my 2 lb leader would not endure lifting the fish. I measured it quickly with a dollar bill which
is 6 inches long and came up with about 13 inches of obscenely fat bluegill. Awesome fish. Probably weighed 2 lbs +. I released it of course. I then caught another smaller gill and a LMB that was very healthy. When he finished his sandwich and came out to join me, he asked if I had caught anything. When I told him, he smiled, a knowing smile.
He had built the home as a dream home for him and his wife in '98. His wife had passed suddenly earlier in the year so he decided to sell the home. I stumbled onto the Zillow listing just a few hours after it had been posted and it read like everything we had ever wanted in a country home. Some acreage, tons of wildlife, the pond, huge garden area. After catching that 13" hybrid, the house could have been a shack and I still would have wanted to buy it based on the size of that bluegill alone. lol
I replanted in spring of '17 with more hybrids, and some YBP, and 2 gallons of fatheads to compliment the perch. The last time he had planted was in '08 so it was time. The perch have grown very fast. Some of the females are now almost 12". I will at some point start to selectively harvest some of the perch, but with all of the abundant lakes in the area, I can get all of the bluegills I need for the freezer from local lakes and will probably catch and release the hybrids. I've not fished it for the last two years since restocking. I love watching the fish when I feed them. Very addicting to watch.
I could go into some detail about the blue heron that ate every hybrid it could stalk, but aside from decoys, what I ended up doing was using a bunch of green galvanized fence stakes and bird netting all the way around the 640' of shoreline and the same out in the pond at about thigh depth. This took the wife and I about 40 hours to do over a few weeks time, but we finally stopped that bastard. In one of the above shots with the turkeys, you can see the fence poles and the netting. It's hideous to look at but at least I thwarted his constant and efficient attack upon the hybrids. I took it all out for winter as the pond ices over around the edge in the winter so I get to do it all over again next year. The biologist at the hatchery has a federal permit to kill them as they are very detrimental to their business. I just wish us private pond owners had that option.
Wood duck female with her ducklings and my arch enemy
I even put in 2 wood duck nesting boxes in the swamp adjacent to the pond. I want to give them every opportunity for a successful brood. One of the prettiest ducks swimming imo.
As a side note, I love angling. I'm the only guy in my State of Michigan, that has two
state records. Both were caught accidentally while fishing for other species, but it put
me in the record books twice. No other angler in my state can say that. One was a whitefish caught
surf fishing Lake Michigan for steelhead, and the other was a black bullhead caught accidentally while
fishing for bluegills. I've since been de-throned on both of these records, but I'm still the only guy that
has 2 records on the books.
13 lbs 4 oz whitefish
25 lbs combined on these two nice eyes.
Lake Mi trout (steelhead) caught with 2 lb test leader and spawn fishing in the surf. The one I'm holding is my lifetime personal best for surf fishing with light leaders and noodle rods. It weighed 17 lbs 4 oz.
