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

Thank our Good God , my daughters married good Men, who raised 1st class sons. At 70yoa , have 3 GGrandchildren . The bad news is Ankylosing Spondylitis and Neuropathy up to he knees and elbows, no complaints , others have life much, much, worse. I can still get on the tractor when I have to , but SIL's and Grandsons do it even better. Plus all the girls cook and love too.(explains the swelling, just above the belt) I understand completely DD1. Life wouldn't be anywhere as good OR EZ without them. I get out to the farm to do the necessary work , and it was done , 1-2 days ago, without asking , without being told .

I went fishing for a half hour, and then hunkered down inside the oarhouse for another half hour during a frog strangler. I should have waited longer, as the dog and I were thoroughly soaked upon reaching the house.

We got 2 inches of rain in less than an hour.

After I got the dock addition done, I hauled it to the pond with the tractor. Went for a swim afterward. I didn’t get the water temp, but this seems like the warmest our water has ever been. I’m guessing it’s because of the brown algae this year. Or maybe a week of 90+ degree days. I sure hope this heat breaks before too long. Water is still pretty cool about 12” down.
I’m going to try and bring two 10x8’ docks together. I thought the old dock was ok, but I was informed it was too small. 😂

Snorkelled the lake, dropped a gopro in attached to a water bottle to see what was happening, saw a bunch of trout and then a school of LMB with Dad on high alert chasing off a sunfish. These LMB have grown substantially in the last couple of weeks, the sunfish are spawning again so there should be lots of growth over the next two months. the rainbows are putting on serious weight even though they are fending for themselves.

Are you old enough to remember when the goal posts were on the goal line? Every once in a while, someone would run into a post & get their bell rung really good!

Very close to where I hand throw feed, I put a fence post in the water with a wooden 1X1X 24" cross piece on top as a perch for water birds to warm themselves in the sun on cold days or dry their plumage. A 16" LMB has been blowing up out of the water taking BG as I throw food. She came 2' out of the water trying to get a BG & slammed into that post. The post shock for about 5 seconds. Haven't seen that LMB in over a week.

J.E., that is a great story!

I imagine that if BG were capable of whacking LMB in the head with a 2x4, then LMB would eat a lot fewer BG!

Oscar Osprey & Hank Heron would have new respect for the pond's BG also.

Ive got a giant Bald Eagle that perches up in a dead snag above my automatic fish feeder , I'm assuming he is getting his fill whenever the feeder goes off, the other day I came thru there right after the feeder went off and he had a 4lb CC out on the driveway working on it, I'm not sure if maybe he wasn't able to fly off with it.

I set a game camera there on the edge of the water trying to get a picture of him in action but so far haven't got anything on the camera, hopefully I will get a pretty neat pic of him.

Jake, that’s neat. I very seldom see an eagle.

We have a lot of them on the Missouri River and all the tributary's running into the Missouri, and therefore in many water impoundments around the entire state, I assume.
I have 1 or 2 pretty regularly around my pond, the one is a monster, been hoping they might nest in the area

A little before and after. This is the creek that the spillway empties into from my pond. I still want to clear out from the fence post on left and back. I will eventually have the entire creek cleared out on both sides as well if I live long enough but this is a start.

It was very nice that your actresses were so well trained to star in both your before and after video.

When we first bought our property, I didn't realize how much wildlife enjoys cleared paths and trails. My tallgrass prairie areas are not that difficult to traverse, yet if I mow some trails, all of the wildlife uses the trails, but definitely stays right beside heavy cover in case it is needed.

In WNY, the vegetation can get pretty thick and difficult to navigate due to grape vines and invasive honeysuckles. We have about a mile of trails we maintain for walking the dog and feeding mosquitoes. The trails are heavily used by animals other than us, and in the winter can become a two-lane highway of tamped down snow.
There were a couple of particularly snowy winters where our trails may have been the best path between two areas and it was incredible how much activity was in evidence.

Had a little time to get in some weed wacking in the shallow end of the pond. Hopefully this will make it easier to get the logs, etc out of the pond.

Looking good!

Caught a bass, pretty decent growth in 6 weeks.

Nice!! Looks to be about 4 inches??

I've never seen any as small as the one in the net stocked in our area. Is that the size typically stocked in Canada?

Yes about 4 inches. The little one in the net I scooped up out of a ball of them just after they left the nest basically. One of my earlier posts shows them swimming with their dad in a YouTube video.

I had to replace several decking pieces on my dock that warped to the degree of pulling out screws, or rotting out despite being “treated” lumber. Home Depot lumber is terrible. Clearly this wood was not kiln dried before treatment and shipping.

84 Lumber from now on!

LS, I just replaced the lumber on my dock. About 9 yrs old. It was overall in pretty good shape. I bought the boards from Menards both times. The new boards are slightly oversized “deck” boards. 16 footers because I put 4 dock sections together side by side. I’ll see how this whole thing holds up. I was strongly warned about putting more than 2 sections together, let alone 4. Hoping the 16’ boards help to keep it from bending. I’m going to try to seal it next summer. Right now water beads up on it, I doubt it would take the preservative.
In the meantime, having a larger dock is very nice. I also switched out the ladder for on with 2 additional steps. It was getting to be a challenge to climb out, for the older folks. Haha!

SetterGuy,

My blood pressure just went down merely LOOKING at that picture!

Set up looks good to me.

Watched the brown bats last night dip and dive to eat mosquitos. They really are quite entertaining.

Before I joined Pond Boss, I thought the big bass would eat any size of BG that crossed their path. I didn't realize that for energy reasons LMB prefer prey that is about 1/4 - 1/3 of their own size.

Now compare that to the mosquitos that bats eat. Bats must be incredibly efficient flyers and hunters to thrive on a food source that is 1/1000th(?) of their body weight!

If we could feed bass that efficiently (and they kept growing) our ponds would all be full of 30# bass.

Just curious is all. How do you know they were eating skeeters and not some other, possibly larger insect?

Not sure at all.

The mosquitos were eating me, so I assumed that the bats were eating the evil skeeters.

I believe the bats I frequently watch are Little Brown Bats (Myotis lucifugus). There is a chance they may be Evening Bats (Nycticeius humeralis)

(Or I have both kinds and cannot distinguish them on the wing. However, I believe I am only observing a single species.)

The bats in my area come out when there is still a fair bit of light, so I enjoy watching their antics. They seem to operate from about 5' up to about 20'. I could not see a mayfly hatch, or moths, or any larger insects. But my eyes are certainly starting to get older!

The literature says they consume mosquitos (and other flying insects), but that seems like a very scant meal to me with very few calories. I assume that bats must be able to convert almost all of the calories in insect chitin to useful nutrients - or they would starve.

I was kind of hoping we had an actual bat expert in the forum that would fill in the gaps in my understanding of how bats can survive on such seemingly small rations.

P.S. I have actually held one of these bats in my hands. However, that is a story for another time, but does involve a bat, a fishing net, and the chandelier in my dining room. The small bats in my area do seem impossibly fragile when you examine one very closely.

I am no professional batman by no stretch, but I have seen mosquitoes thick enough where a blind bat could fly around with his mouth open an OD on skeeters.

I have been seeing quite a few bats around my pond recently. makes me want to put up a bat house, anything that eats even one mosquito is just alright by me.

Now if I could just do some bat breeding and try to develop one that eats ticks I would be able to retire and live off the royalties.

I finally got a close up picture of my eagle thats been eating fish from in front of my feeder, couldnt get one on the water but he was getting CC that were too big for him to carry off so he would manage to just drag them out on the bank and eat them there, 4 or 5 big carcasses, so I turned my trail camera to watch the consuming area, and sure enough got a close up of him.

I will post a pic when I have a little more time.