Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Property Projects & Construction What did you do at your pond today?

Finally got around to applying a badly-needed coat of TWP to the swim dock.



Got started on the removal of dead trees below the pond dam. Jammed a stick in the hydrostat linkage on the tractor while pushing brush off into
the sippy hole and wasn't able to reverse out. Pops' old Minneapolis Moline didn't have enough weight to move it, so I called good neighbor Dave
out on a rescue mission. He dropped by yesterday after he finished up in the hayfield. Pulling Nanner out was a walk in the park for his big John Deere.



Another big water snake met its doom in the B trap. QA's crayfish jumped in to help with the cleanup.

Glad to know you got the tractor out and that the craws are doing good...they look delicious. I have seen a lot less craws in my pond so far this year. I am thinking that the CC that were stocked last year are doing their job along with the added BG to help keep craw recruitment down. Hopefully I have found a balance between the craws and the fish. I will miss trapping them some and sharing the harvest...time will tell.

Take a look at the current PB mag issue on what craws can/may do to LMB and BG recruitment.

Glad to hear you are getting a good balance with your crayfish.

However, it was entertaining to read threads with lines like, "Quarter Acre's crayfish are really doing a job on the weeds in my pond."

Fed the fish, and sweat a lot.

Today since the pond surface temp is over 70°F now I plan on snagging any of the remaining trout that I see in the pond.

Called EZ Dock folks to get a five foot extension for walkway to my dock. This will place dock in somewhat deeper water, important during droughts like now. Shade in hot summer is good habitat! Also gives fish more time to devour food pellets before prevailing wind buries them in shoreline vegetation.

Tough call to spend money on stuff like this now. On the one hand, you know it will cost more in the future, maybe a lot more. Rapid inflation militates against savings that lose value quickly. On the other hand, it's important to have something in reserve to meet rising costs. In this case, the economist in me is in a fight with the nervous retiree!

I have the same problem re inflation. And, although I know I can afford to spend $, I start remembering when I couldn’t. And also understand that those times just might come again through inflationary pressures.

Went by the pond yest and I guess the feeder had been empty for a day or so, the fish were going nuts for feed when I filled it, more then I had seen in a while, I don't feed very much, just a 6 second flurry once a day in one corner of 15 acres you wouldn't think would make much difference but they love some free food, what I did notice lately are LMB at the feeder, a month ago I noticed a couple floating around and grabbing a pellet or two when I tossed out some feed but yesterday there were a bunch of them right in the middle of it grabbing their share of the grub. I have one little cove in the pond with reasonably shallower water and the BG spawn all summer long it seems in the point of it. I love tossing some feed in above the nesting area and the little suckers churn the water to get to it.


Also been seeing a few cormorants making them selves at home on a brushpile on the pond. they have a predictable weird way of flying away, the pond is surrounded by tall trees on hillsides except for the dam area so they take of and circle a few laps to get above the treetops to take off, their line of flight brings them conveniently close by the dock, I can get a closer look at them as they fly by, if you know what I mean. there don't seem to be as many hanging around as there used to be, maybe they are migrating on.
Also pretty much confirmed that the purple martins have nested in one of my homemade wood duck boxes, have seen them on it before but they were sitting in the doorway yesterday, female or juveniles, love that, i been wanting to put purple martin house out for a couple yrs but never have.

Pulled cattails at the new pond (at least 50) and a couple of phragmites. This was a former crop field and one of the phragmites was a large stem coming up threw 7-8 feet of water (glad that the water is warm). This plant must be coming up from a dormant rhizome rather than a seed based on its size and the depth of the water. There have been no phragmites in this area for over 30 years. Can phragmites rhizomes remain dormant in the soil and be viable after that much time?

I've been slowly increasing the run times on my aeration pump. Last night it ran the full summertime measure - midnight to 7:00am.
Dunked the thermometer in at lunchtime today to check the water temps. Had 74.5°F surface temp, 71.1°F at 8.5', and 59.9°F at 10'.
The diffuser is sitting 4' off the bottom in ~15' water. Will be interesting to see how long the thermocline holds up.

We have a couple of big lakes in Kansas that fluctuate fairly regularly and Phrag seems to maintain well in about 12'. Their rhizome can shoot 4-6" a day to stay at the water's edge.. any chance the water was a different level at one time?? Usually not a single plant though..

This pond site has been in field crops since the 1950's at least based on historic areal pics. I dug up one old clay field tile run when I built it. The presence of pretty large diameter shoots, one plant in very deep water, baffles me. I know that cattail seeds can last over 50 years in the soil, but these phragmites look like they are coming from some larger rhizomes and have not found any info on them being able to lay dormant for that long. I suspect the site was quite wet before it was tiled, but was farmed in recent times.

Boy Mother Nature sure can adapt

I don't know about 30 years but I have been told rye seeds can remain dormant underground for over a decade.

I looked at my pond today and thought "If I was managing this pond for a customer, I'd get fired because of all the FA that is floating on the surface." On the "to do" list now is spray the FA. Since the trout are now MIA (assuming dead) I don't have to worry about killing them with the Cutrine Plus.

Like the cobblers kids shoes, my personal pond is the last one to get taken care of.

I DID stock 19 8"-10" feed trained WE in it today though. Those were left overs from some that I picked up June 10th.

esshup, I'm relating very well with your predicament. I used pond dye this spring just to see if it would help the bad FA I had last year. I would say it did well at first at least. Then whether it was timing of water warm up or if it was timing with my first lawn fertilizer application, but I have an explosion like you. It seems mostly floating (last fall I had a carpet on the bottom of the pond). I feel I can rake most of it without having to wade out too far. But that sounds a lot like work in this heat we have been having. I then hope that it is providing some cover for young minnows while I build up courage and time.

I have been too busy to put out my turtle floats, partly because last year they were big logs that I couldn't keep floating the right way up. I have ideas in my head on making my own like others on the forum did but no time and energy again.

I also didn't put out my SFS spawning structures same reason, need to make some more, no time. But I saw the other day a fair number of sliver sized minnows cruising around so once again the SFS found their own structure!! I do have pallets in so maybe they used them somehow. My first goal is to pull the pallets out, clean algae off and use my circular saw to create some 'crevices' or grooves of various depths and widths and see if that will help.

Please tell us how your WE do. Will they stay feed trained? Will you be able to witness them eat the pellets or will they only feed at night? How fast will they grow?

How low is your pond and will you have to keep the depth at full depth to help assure their success in a 'groundwater pond' or is that a myth about Walleye?

CC, all good questions. Hopefully they will stay feed trained, they have not seen another fish to eat except their brothers and sisters. I was told that they will grow fast if kept in a RAS, On 4-5-2022, 3.25" fish that were hatched on 2-5-2022 would be 10"-12" in length in October. As to seeing them feed, I have no idea. When I had the smaller ones in the RAS, they were being fed sinking feed.

Maybe there will be some genetic "memory" in these fish, as it's been a few generations that the parents/grandparents, etc. have solely been on feed in a RAS system.

My pond is currently about 48" low, but I have plenty of depth.

Today, for the first time I seen several small LMB eating the Optimal fish food, and a lot of it.

I went down to our creek to try and trap minnows.

I usually sneak up on the pools to see what is in them before the fish startle. I did see a large red eared slider happily munching away on the FA in the creek. I didn't know they ate that!

I then checked the best pools for minnows. All of the big minnows were gone! The pools are now full of fat sunfish and 5" long bass. The only minnows I could see were a species that was too small to be caught in my trap.

I think there are still some large minnows in the riffles. That is the only safe space from the predators in the creek. I really need to get better at my trapping, because I suspect the minnows that live in the riffles are a different species than the ones that prefer living in the pools.

A lot of the minnows in our creeks are Red Shiners and one with a lateral stripe I haven't identified yet. These typically hang out behind riffles. In the riffles I catch a lot of darters. It appears the minnow spawn I over locally.

3.46 pounds. Didn’t measure him/her. We also have always had lots and lots of bullfrog tadpoles, but very few mature bullfrogs. Now with all the American Pond Weed, we have lots of bullfrogs staying around. Swam around the edges yesterday with my grandson. We counted 27 bigger frogs in the weeds and on the banks. Hopefully they won’t attract too many snakes.

Best news of the day. My daughter, while trying to net a frog for her daughter got a net full of small crawfish and glass shrimp. We haven’t seen the glass shrimp for several years. I thought they were killed off during the last drought when the pond got pretty low.

Jeff, that is a nice fish!

No wonder your SMB are so fat and happy!