Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Raising Forage and Bait BG nesting bed depth and water clarity

I was just wondering if water clarity had an impact on the depth that bluegills spawn? My water clarity is only around 12" (due to suspended mud particles) and I put in several pea gravel beds for them when I built my pond, but they are all around 4-7 ft deep. I was wondering if due to the low visibility of the water, if that would force the bluegills to look for shallower spawning beds?

I can only rely on rain water to fill the pond, so I opted to put the beds on the deeper side so that they would always have water over them even when the pond was low. Up until recently my pond was 6ft low, so only the one deepest spawning bed was actually submerged under water. However, after a recent long rain I'm now almost full. Given that we are just now entering the rainy season, I'll hopefully have a full 2 months or more of my lake being full. Wasn't sure if it was worth the additional effort to add a few more shallower spawning beds when the opportunity presents itself.

Thanks

David

I have not ever seen fish spawn in in a pond or lake that didn't have sunlight reaching the bottom. I would add pea gravel from that 6/-7' depth to within 12" depth of the high water mark. I have seen BG/RES still on beds where their backs were almost out of the water.

I would start looking into ways to minimize the suspended clay particles. 1) Get dense grass/clover established around the pond. 2) Do a jar test, and if it's not mechanical means that is keeping the clay suspended, think really hard about doing an alum treatment to get the clay to precipitate out of the water.

I would add a few shallow. They don't need to be large spans of gravel. Just mimic these.

Definitely going to look into it more now that the lake is up. Just wasn't worth it when it was sitting so low. I did a jar test with alum and it cleared up pretty quick.

Well, now you have two more jobs to do on your list. Just monitor the pH when doing the alum. Hydrated lime buffers it. You can't mix both together and apply at once, it makes a gel.

I am a big fan of experimentation to optimize your results.

If you don't have much time available to work this spring, maybe lay down some landscape fabric and try 1-2 beds at 18", and then 3', and then 4.5'.

If your water slowly clears up enough this spring that you can observe the deeper nests, let the BG "tell" you which depth they prefer for your particular pond conditions.

You can then do more of those for next year's spawn.

One thing we did to help the water clarity was add 3 to 5 tons of lime per acre. We literally had a 50 acre mud hole. Mike at southeastern pond came and looked at it and suggested the lime. It worked literally the next day. Those particles are so light weight they won't sink, but the lime bonded to them and cleaned it up. It was awesome the way it worked.
Might be what you need, plus helps with alkaline levels. Double bonus for us

BG often have several sets of beds at different depths. They use the ones best suited for the time and condition of the lake.