Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Newish to me old pond: should I add redears?

I'm the proud 1/5 owner of a 5 acre pond that's about 60 years old. It's really shallow (3-4 feet) and fertile as a lot of land runs off into it. It drains from the top with a little spillway on the dam. The water tends to be very pea soupy and turbid but there aren't any current problems with duckweed or vegetation. Fish are LMB, BG, BH, and golden shiners (can't remember the acronym). Been feeding for a few years and it seems like the shiners are outcompeting the bluegills (which I have inadvertently encouraged the neighbors to harvest). Bass are OK but I think they're limited by the cloudy water. I've removed as many turtles and bullheads as I could catch.

There are a lot of freshwater mussels and parasites on the LMB and older BG.

My question is: should I stock redears to reduce the parasites, or leave the mussels alone to preserve water quality? Is there some third option?

Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks in advance!

I would certainly try adding some RES. I hate seeing parasites on caught fish!

Most of the people on the forum use RES to eat the snails that are part of the parasite cycle.

I don't know about their effectiveness on eating mussels. I have one type of freshwater mussel with thin-wall shells that I think the RES could crunch up to a certain size. I also have one type of freshwater clam with a thicker shell. I suspect the RES can only consume these clams when they are relatively small.

I cannot see how adding RES would create an imbalance in your existing fish populations. They will occupy a slightly different niche than your BG.

If you do add some RES, you might not see them very often in your pond. Unless you very specifically fish for them, you may only be aware of their presence by a reduction in your parasitic grubs.

I actually think my raccoons are my biggest predator on mussels. I frequently see footprints into the shallow water and a pile of leftover shells. However, they don't appear to eat enough to seriously suppress the mussel population.

I believe there are also some chemical treatments for mussels. Does any water from a stream or another body of water reach your pond during big rain events that fill your pond? If so, then this may be a difficult battle for you to win. If you only need to fight the mussels in YOUR water, then you may have a chance.

We actually have several people in the forum with aquatic biology backgrounds. Hopefully, they will drop into your thread and provide some expert advice (rather than my amateur comments).

I do like that you have a 60 y.o. pond that does not have duckweed or vegetation problems. That is a good sign that your trapped nutrient load is growing very slowly.

If you have too much water due to your large watershed, can you build a few swales to divert some of the water around your pond? That would probably make it less turbid, and would exclude a little bit of the incoming nutrients. If you can't do that, can you install some groundcover strips to slow down the surface water flows and perhaps filter some of the silt?

Good luck on the improvements to your 5-acre pond. I hope it brings lots of enjoyment to you and all of the other owners!

Can you describe the external parasites? There might be a bunch of snails in there that you haven't noticed. I'd throw in 500 RES per surface acre.If you look at the record sized RES in Lake Havana, they are that big because of Quagga Mussels.

With the pond being that shallow, I suspect that there is a considerable amount of aquatic vegetation that might need some management. Not all of it, but if there is a considerable amount, then removing some will help the LMB hunt down the shiners easier.

It might not hurt to throw in 25-50 HSB to chow down on the GSH. If they HSB thrive in the pond, adding 25 - 50 per year and then harvesting that many per year starting in 3-4 years after stocking them might be helpful for the GSH population. .

Really appreciate the input.

Nothing I can do about the runoff. Big chunk of a neighborhood drains into it. Fortunately it's a wooded area and there isn't a lot of fertilizer. The ditches that feed into it dry up regularly. Overflow from the pond actually feeds into a much larger lake about a mile away and there are 20' deep canyons in the woods between. Really neat, but it's one way (though of course turtles and birds go between them).

There doesn't seem to be any aquatic vegetation at all, probably because nothing can grow on the bottom. You can't see it if the water is deeper than 8" or so.

There's definitely snails. Parasites are the stubby white worm type that you mostly see around the fins. My concern is mostly that I think of the mussels as beneficial, and I'm worried redears will kill them off. I may start sniping a few coons! Hah.

HSB is a neat idea. Not sure how many people grow them around here. I did ask someone about them once (who did sell them but they're quite far away from me). They advised against it as they thought the pond would be too shallow and hot for HSB. I'm in central MS.

Since you have plenty of water, can you raise the dam?

If you raised the dam by 5', then you would have lots of 8-9' deep water - that should be very productive in MS.



Also, ponds have a limit called "carrying capacity". Most simply, there is a limit on how many pounds of fish a given pond can support. If you have lots of big golden shiners, they may actually be using up some of the pond resources that otherwise would go to the BG.

For a small pond like yours, you might be able to actually fish out enough of the shiners to make an improvement. There are several people on the forum that have deliberately fished for 1-2 years on their ponds just to cull the shiner population.

Do you have any kids/grandkids that could help? Large shiners on ultralight tackle are still fun to catch.

3'-4' IS shallow and you will be constantly battling weed problems. The pond may get too hot for the HSB, but I don't think it'd hurt to throw 15-20 in there and see if they make it. You probably won't see them for the first year or two if they do make it.

I like the way you think, but that's not really possible.


They're tough to catch with hook and line, but easy to cast net. I haven't tried to systematically remove them but I do catch a bucket full from time to time to use for bait. I'll also clip the tails and release (a tip I saw here!). Seems to work as I haven't caught one with a missing tail.


There really just don't seem to be any weeds at all. Not saying they won't appear at some point. If I get the chance, I'll grab some of those HSB and report back how they work out.

----

Speaking of carrying capacity, the pond was full of massive bullheads when I moved in and I pulled probably 50 of them in the 2+lb range. Very few intermediate size. I thought I was done with them (got really sick of eating old catfish), but last night I put out some lines and got two 3lb'ers and a 2lber. Maybe I should have tried to make it a trophy bullhead pond?

BTW if you are trying to remove bullheads and turtles, those automatic hook setting rod holders you can get online work really well. Obviously it's not as good as doing it yourself but the hookup rate is better than jugs and it's way easier. I use a smallish (size 1 or 2) aberdeen hook like you'd use for crappie.

The state record for a yellow bullhead is only 2lbs 13.5oz... I caught two bigger than that yesterday.

That is awesome.

Do you have any young family members that can come fish your pond? If so, when you have good conditions for bullhead fishing, perhaps have them come wet a line.

Catching a 3# bullhead with your dad or uncle is fun. Getting it recorded as a state record is awesome for great memories, AND for show and tell at school.

(If you are going to try and do that, I would research how to get a fish certified in MS, and where your nearest "official" scale is located. That way you can do it quickly, since fish generally start losing a little weight as soon as they go into the livewell.)

Found this poor guy floating but still alive. Revived a bit when I gave him some swimming assistance.

15", almost 2lbs. Good relative weight.

No obvious recent injuries (e.g. from being caught).

Guessing he got killed by the parasites. Probably not safe to eat? I hate to let him go to waste.

One of the smartest people I ever met told me that food would tell you when it's gone bad.

I don't know if that's actually true but the fillets look fine so we'll see. If I don't post again assume it killed me.

As long as the fillet is cooked well, the parasites will be killed and harmless.

My concern is that a secondary infection may have been what actually got him and that there'd be some toxicity from bacteria byproducts. I guess we'll see. I haven't actually eaten it yet. Giving it a good soak in the fridge first.

I did decide to stock some redears, but I'm doing it the lazy/fun way by just going around catching them with hook and line and dumping them in. So far I've stocked one male and two females. Lucky guy.

Got a few more with a little help from the kiddo.

Unfortunately 6-year olds are better at filling ice chests with perch than stocking ponds with them. Especially redears with their subtle bites. Swallowed hook city.

I wonder if it might be cost effective to hire a iarge excavator and dump truck to deepen it some. You may not have to worry about freezing down south; but wouldn't water that shallow normally have lots of weeds and get hot?

Good question. We have a second, small pond on our land in South Alabama which is probably 1/2 an acre and I was thinking about managing it myself as sort of a pet project. It's super shallow. I was actually going to post a thread on here asking how shallow is too shallow for LMB. Yes, the shallow water gets very hot in the Summer.

The pond is so fertile that large plants just won't grow in it because sun doesn't reach the bottom. Don't know if this keeps the water cooler, but I imagine it does.

In my experience bass can live in pretty darn shallow water. I'd think 3 feet deep is plenty (with obvious caveats).

Add RES to growout in the 2nd pond. 3-4 feet deep is enough for a growout pond even if hot there are options to deal with that as needed.