Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Property Projects & Construction Bushy Pondweed taking over

Mother Nature is doing her intended job of aging your pond by making it shallow to grow more plants to eventually make it back into a swamp and then dry land. It is called Aquatic Succession. All the previous years of plant growing nutrient collection and dead weed collections are 'working hard' to filling-in and age your pond. Long tern capital appropriation plans should be to rebuild this pond as deeper and maybe smaller to be easier to manage yet still grow decent sized fish.
1. Your clear water is caused by the abundant rooted plant growth and competing with phytoplankton. Plants clearing the water allows light to the bottom to grow more and better plants. Pond dye will help some at 3ft and deeper to reduce light penetration, however dye also reduces the entire pond food web to cause the pond to grow fewer pounds of fish.

2. Some of your TGC could have been eaten by big LMB or numerous other types of fish predators. Remember that TGC need to be 2yrs old (>24") before they can annually eat enough of a large weed infestation to make a visually significant plant difference. In your shallow with many years of a nutrient laden system with clear water it could take 8-10/ac TGC to keep the weeds noticably reduced. Then after 4-6 years restock 4-8/ac TGC based on weed amount present or work to remove a few GC if no weeds exist. IMO never add enough TGC to totally eliminate the weeds. Some rooted weeds provide habitat and compete heavily against the FA that will take over due to high amount of years of nutrient basin accumulations when weeds are gone. NUTRIENTS ALWAYS GROW PLANTS OF SOME SORT.

3. The large percentage of shallow water having good light penetration is conducive to growing lots and lots of some type of underwater plant material be a form of algae or submerged rooted plants.

4. Sadly - Killing all the plant growth does nothing to remove nutrients that made it grow. Removal of plants does remove nutrients from the basin but can you remove enough at this late point in time to make a significant reduction of future plant growth?. More growth will reocurr if pond basin nutrient conditions are not dimished. Prior years of nutrient accumulations from farming and added nutrients and resulting of dead slop build up in the pond will never really go away nor be eliminated until the pond is rebuilt. The pond is a big bathtub with no drain. Toilet with no flusher, unless you have a constant overflow or flow through system.

5. You have let the weeds get too big of a head start in Spring. Treat early in Spring with an appropriate herbicide to reduce the weeds enough until the TGC have grown to a size of 24+" to eat a lot of weeds. You can use some removal methods plus spot or whole pond treatment herbicides to reduce weed growth until TGC get to a REAL weed eating size to make a noticable difference. Do good homework for best weed herbicide treatment for your weed specie/s.

6. One good benefit of the weeds is it limits the angling pressure on the fish and gives them a 'rest' so they tend to be less hook smart. Do most of your angling during the year when the weeds are mininal.