QA - You've been here, like your place my pond is in the yard, and thanks to the covid panic I get to work from home all the time now. Makes it really easy to check the trap three times a day. Adding a couple more traps to the equation won't be much trouble. Same deal with manning the cage. I built one that's 2' diameter and 5' tall. A cage that big will hold a lot of little sunfishes.
If it will stop raining long enough for me to move some dirt it will only take a weekend to get the forage pond built. I can pump from the creek to fill it up without having to wait on the next rain to do that. At that point I can sort what's in the cage and toss the BG/HBG into the bait pond. If it keeps raining and I don't get the forage pond built I'll eventually sort the cage and toss the ones I don't want into the creek.
If I wind up building or buying a big seine I will definitely be appreciative of some help manning it. Still scratching my head on that. I did some googling on Fykes nets yesterday. Those things are expensive, and all of them I found are made with mesh that's too big to catch the size fish that I'd be targeting. I'm thinking that the seine I have now might serve as a good lead connected to a properly sized B, Z, or cloverleaf trap.
TG - Yeah, I agree eliminating them will be impossible. I'm just going to have to do some extra work to control the numbers so they don't get out of hand. SMB and HSB go in this fall. I'll buy the biggest ones that are available when the time comes. I'd go so far as to hire a shock boat if it starts to look like I'm loosing the battle. And saying that just gave me an idea... I'd bet a guy who has a background in electronics (that be me) just might be able to build his own fish zapper gizmo. On a pond the size of this one it wouldn't be necessary to rig it on a boat. The electrodes could be deployed on PVC pontoons from the dock. Time for some more research...
