Before your first bloom in the spring, do you think you can fly much lower and actually count your fish when your visibility is 4-5 feet?
During the BG spawn, will you be able to observe them on the spawning beds you made?
There is a little ring of better vegetation around the pond at what looks to be a constant elevation. Did your new pond previously reach full pool, before the extended drought took it back down again? If so, would seeding a little rye around the pond in the fall have saved you some erosion on the banks and sediment going into the pond?
Rod
The pond did reach full pool and was flowing out the pipe 3 different times. When at full pool, the pond was about 50% covered with vegetation. Southern Naiad and American pond weed. Only 1/3 of an acre was deeper than 4 feet at full pool. That's why I added the Flashboards to bring the water level up about 3 feet when it's full. As Mr. Lusk say s we only borrow the water so I needed to figure out how to raise the water level as much as possible. I'm constrained by a county road on the intake side so don't have much to work with. When it gets low again I plan on removing more of the dirt so I have less shallow water. I'm looking forward to Spring rains.
I planted Triticale last year to prevent soil erosion and grass has established about everywhere it will so not sure planting again would have helped. When they built the pond they took it down to Shale on one side so I'm going to have to fix that to get some vegetation growing. (Dumb tax paid even though the pond was basically free)
If I can maintain clear water that is not covered in Vegetation I'm confident I can get some good video of them on beds. Here's a video of me feeding back in September. I'm able to be at the pond almost every day so I feed by hand.
2 Acre, Completed July 2022, CC,BG, Sept. 2022, LMB June 2023, GSF, YBH invasion in 2022. BG, CNBG, RES, 2025, TP seasonal.
