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

Hey thanks, well looks like running the aerator all night freed it right up! Now it's flowing and that was my worry - that the ice was just going to lift up my weir boards. Some great ideas thanks very much. For next season it should be flowing quite well all winter.

I also checked my DO today and was at about 3 - 4ppm down about 4 feet, the RBT and BRT are still cruising at 10 feet and lower so they must be doing all right.

Any guesses today? That's clear as the shot could be.

Looks like a turtle to me. Or a rock.

Went to my place today. No rain since last visit but appears to still be about 4 ft low. Small1/4 acre pond and spring fed creek looked good.

Critter in a conibear.

40 cms of snow coming this week so i put 250 brookies in the lake and plowed off about 3 acres before the slush comes up.

I studded up the tires on the kubota and it did a great job. I'll have a blower on it next year.

We are into the late season ice now, 36 inches with about 2 feet of snow cover. Trout aren't biting now. I put a camera i so I'll check the footage tonight. I did see sunfish at every depth down to 12 feet. Weeds are still green where I plowed the lake off , this time last year the open water smelled like swamp gas but there is no smell now and no decomp that I can see which I'm happy for.

Rain forecast for this week so hopefully we can get the melt started.

And I found another fish killer having a snooze.

I'm on holidays and at my cabin so not much else to do other than bore yall with pics. Rbt are in 2 feet of water , sunfish are at all depths and there are massive schools of them. I don't see any dace minnows but I do see sticklebacks, going to need smb for sure this year to take care of some of these sunfish. I'm running loads of gravel out onto the ice in front my my incoming creeks and springs so itll drop when it melts. 36 inches of ice but still decent light below the surface. I'll oat a video in a couple of days...thank God it's starting to melt..

That looks great. Sunfish can tolerate lower O2 levels than Trout can. It's amazing that you could get that close to a sleeping otter!

I get the feeling he's pretty good at getting close to sleeping otters!

I seem to have that effect on animals...

Up until 2 weeks or so ago the trout were right on the bottom..Like hugging the contours, now they are up tip, late season poor quality DO like you say. We've always found that in lakes around here in the winter..late season trout are hanging out at the mouths of creeks and hugging the ice.

Any idea how bottom feeders like suckers do in low DO? I have about 30 in there that should be pretty big...unless the sleeping otters got them.

I honestly have no idea on the O2 requirements of the suckers. We typically don't have them here.

It looks like it might be warming up, so we did a few project that were easier with 12" of ice. 1) put a pile of rocks near a point to enhance habitat, 2) put together a stack of choke cherry and brick weight for structure, 3) added a duck box (in 2-1/2' of water). The ice meant we could use our small utility tractor. Great Day! I have also include a picture of the winter aeration we are doing at the dock and outlet using a compressor at the house and 300' of 1" black PVC out to the pond, with virtually no pressure loss.

Did the same today! Laid out some gravel for the trout to spawn on...in front of some incoming springs. Grabbed the only few cedars on my 400 acres, a couple of spruce and a bunch of ironwood, put some stumps on them to sink them. Still 30 to 36 inches of ice but the sun is really pounding the ice though...going to take a while to melt that much.

Oh and a new friend showed up, I'm sure he will be sleeping soon.

On the property today prepping for Spring, setting up some new beehives and took a few minutes to hand throw some small floating pellets out in the water. It was nice to see some takers show up to hit the surface getting a little snack. Amazing that it's almost time to crank up the feeder again for the year.

Boon, good to hear you are seeing some action.

I treated the FA yesterday with Cutrine plus granules. I still have too much shallow water. The pond is about 5 feet low. Didn't see any results this morning, first time treating FA so not sure of the timeframe to see results.

We had 3 tenths of rain today, hopefully we're all in for a wet spring!!

I'm going to check water temps and to try my luck at catching some fish tomorrow. 13 to 33 MPH winds, they are forecasting 25 to 62 MPH for Tuesday, might be interesting.

Yesterday, March 1, our pond's water temp reached 54 degrees. A few sunfish and 2 enormous grass carp appeared. One of those, as he cruised by, looked to be a solid 4 feet long. I certainly do not want to hook that one on ultralight tackle.
Today I tossed some meal worms and Optimal BG. Sunfish, both green and bluegill, started feeding. Water temp was up to 56 degrees. So, I started the year's fishing season. Caught, kept, filleted, and air fried 9, up to 8" long. Tasty.
That's the earliest we've eaten pond caught fish in the 15 Springs we've lived here.

Pond was 56 degrees, winds were 16 -30 MPH

We had 3 tenths of rain last night.

I caught the first LMB of the year. It was the first bass I had tagged, it grew 14mm and gained .06 of a pound and was 112% RW. Also caught a healthy HBG.

I was finished fishing and took a piece of powerbait off my hook. When I threw it in I saw a flash as soon as it hit the water.

Went to the shop and grabbed about a pound of MVP, I was surprised to see how active they are already. Time to start feeding!

What was the time period for that amount of growth?

Sure looks like a healthy LMB to me coming out of winter. Time to let the spring feeding frenzy begin!

It is close to 60 degrees here in W. PA.

My neighbor Lee's wife and kid were at their pond and threw feed and had a lot of takers. Unfortunately, they didn't get a water temp.

They did get some quality underwater video that showed bluegill and yellow perch.

Tiny;

Thanks for your comments on my newbie post. I see by your pics what you mean that your pond is similar to mine.

I feel so inadequate when I see the size of the tree structure you put out ! I just put 4 small cedars in the middle of my pond. Not much size to them but they should help since there is virtually none in the pond now, it's a start.

I still have several inches of ice yet but it's starting to rot so I chickened out driving my tractor out on it. Wish I would have gotten inspired to make some improvements earlier I could have gotten some rocks & gravel out as well. I've got some projects for next winter I guess.

Grrrr.... meant to quote Tinylake on the previous. Still getting the hang of this. Sorry for the multiple posts..

Tiny;

Thanks for your comments on my newbie post. I see by your pics what you mean that your pond is similar to mine.

I feel so inadequate when I see the size of the tree structure you put out grin! I just put 4 small cedars in the middle of my pond. Not much size to them but they should help since there is virtually none in the pond now, it's a start.

I still have several inches of ice yet but it's starting to rot so I chickened out driving my tractor out on it. Wish I would have gotten inspired to make some improvements earlier I could have gotten some rocks & gravel out as well. I've got some projects for next winter I guess.

Yeti,

The good news, is that since your pond is a little sparse for structure, any you put in this spring will probably be a bigger % change than anyone else on the forum improving their existing pond.

It was caught 8/16/24 so the growth is not that impressive in my opinion. The first time it was caught it was 125% RW. All though, with the 3 ponds I've kept up with RW for LMB I see a trend that the larger the LMB get there tends to be in increase in the numbers with lower RW. Hopefully one of the experts can tell me if that's just results from the ponds I'm keeping up with or is common.

I'm pretty sure I have a hole in the food chain.

All baitfish trapped and caught are at least 4 inches and there is an abundance of 4-7 inch GSF and 8+ inch YBH. I'm thinning them out by seining, trapping and fishing.

I have almost Zero dense habitat to support small fish but I'm working on that. I will have it in before the BG spawn.

I have an abundance of HBG and GSF but hardly any pure BG.

Stocking 200 BG 4-6" and 200 RES 4-6" on 3/15/25 (lots of snails present) 30-40# of Mozambique Tilapia in May or as soon as available. I have lots of FA growing below the surface. I treated Saturday with Cutrine Plus granules but have not seen any results yet. Not sure how long it takes to work. I also have liquid to use once these 60MPH winds subside. Mr. Lusk also says TP are fantastic for intermediate BG growth.

After hearing the exciting news about my neighbor's pond, I went to our neighborhood pond yesterday evening.

Unfortunately, the stand pipe has structurally failed. Somehow, the 4' steel column has probably creased due to corrosion and the weight of the rebar cage and partition plate caused the whole structure to essentially collapse.

It's going to require a full draining and replacement of the stand pipe.

I'm going to have to figure out what to do with the existing fish. I may try and get a fish hauler and take as many as I can catch/net up to my main pond about an hour away, but it's going to suck.