Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Restoring a bluegill pond

Bluegill, Black Crappie, Brown Bullhead? Good job!!!

My sons and I were able to do quite a bit of culling over the winter and made a couple brush piles out of a very large deadfall that came down on the ice.

I can now anchor the row boat and knock off small black crappie from the brush piles - they are "open" enough that LMB can ambush prey easily


I went down to the pond last night and knocked off a few bluegill and black crappie to feed to the raccoons - once the curly leaf sets in the black crappie are much easier to catch and cull, they're pushing bait toward shore in the mornings and evenings now.




Water is 2' over normal due to a 10' rotten log being wedged in the outlet pipe haha that was a fun one to get out! Gotta love the water quality early in the spring - clear water, curly leaf is about to start sprouting, nice algae bloom starting to kick off, had a pair of wood ducks on the water when I made the hike down

Been teaching my youngest to fish a top water frog for bass lately - yesterday he had 10+ blow ups, 2 hook ups and 1 to the boat Bass population is doing awesome! As much as I would like to have a trophy bluegill pond - the kids have just as much fun catching some big largemouth!!!

We are in the middle of a drought locally so water quality is excellent (4-5' of visibility), FA is dwindling but still carrying a nice green shade bloom. Bout time to start running the cloverleaf trap again

Matt, that boy is the best reason to have a pond.

I think you want between 18-30" of visibility. 48-60" is probably a sign that your water is infertile (someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm still learning about fertilization).

Or there is a dense weed population that is utilizing the nutrients before the phytoplankton can get going.

kinda both - the inlet to the pond is a bit of a wetland, which has transitioned over the last 5 years from 90% bull tongue/10% grass to 80% tall grasses. The grasses do a great job of controlling the silt coming down the feeder creeks and outlet from the pond above. They also seem to pull a lot more nutrients than the bull tongue. These years with little rain = huge curly leaf pondweed stands. Unusually high spring temps killed off the curly leaf a bit early. Result, I have some very clear (relative) early summer water. We got over an 1" of rain last night and about 3" in the forecast for the next 5 days. The downfall to the clarity, I have a GBH that is on the pond daily and the BG beds are deeper than I've ever seen - 4-5' on the downward slope of the shoreline which makes it hard to gauge the size/numbers. Hence, I need to get the cloverleaf going to get a decent survey.