Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations How to re-establish grass in a clear pond

Hey folks! Good Day!! I have a 7 acre pond with this History... It was overpopulated with LMB. Fished hard and got it under control about 10 years ago. Began fertilizing to cloudy the water to help retard some of the Nyad grass. Fishing was really good. Had lots of Nyad growing and becoming a problem. Folks started complaining about the grass so I Had a professional come and poison and added grass carp. Fast forward to current, we noticed for the past 2 years, we have minimal baitfish and minnows being seen. The pond have several "flat" areas of 2ft and less of water with no grass trying to grow at all there. As clear as the water is,4-5ft visibility, it seems to me that grass should be growing. I have been cutting trash trees around the edge and dropping them into the water for cover. Fishing is down but I think it's obviously because of minimal grass, minimal cover for baitfish, so minimal fish. I'm thinking of trying to plant some type good grass cover that may also help with ducks??? Millet, or whatever you think would help. I think that grass and structure improvement makes more sense than just dumping lots of bait into the pond. Your thoughts are appreciated!!

Grass carp GC) are very likely eating all the "grass" that is trying to grow. Keep removing GC until the "grass" starts again growing. Planting more vegetation will likely just feed the GC. Reduce numbers of GC. What probably happened was chemically killing the vegetation and then one was too eager to add too many GC. Thus as the GC grew bigger too many of them overate (denuded) the vegetation. A common problem when stocking GC.

I think the LMB are again becoming too abundant and eating too much of the forage fishes. Too many hog bass consume too much food that is being produced by the pond. I would start using selective harvest of them until you began having more forage species. Adding habitat will help produce increased forages but if the productive LMB keep producing more new bass each year. You need to remove enough bass as the bass keep increasing their numbers to keep overeating the forage base no matter how much forage is produced or added. The bass numbers have to be balanced to the amount available of so they don't overeat the food being produced by the pond.

What Bill said. 7 acres, you should have been removing 140 pounds of LMB per year for the past 10 years. I would get a bump board and a good digital scale that doesn't have a hook on it, a clip so it clips the fish's jaw is less stressful to the fish.

Weigh and measure the fish. Download thee a relative weight chart. Once the spawn is over for a month or so, see how the relative weights compare to the chart. If less than 100% - 110%, I would take out 200-220 pounds of the lowest % RW fish this year and do the same again next year.

Get someone to bow fish the lake at night and get the TGC out of there. Once the underwater vegetation gets established you can add a FEW. Not a bunch. How many were stocked in there before?

Thank you so much for the responses!! If I remember correctly, it was 7-10 GC. What is the BEST way to get rid of ALL of them?? Someone who is an experienced Bow Fisherman should know how to do it?? Thanks again!

IMO You don't really need to get rid of all the grass carp. Leave2-3 or at least one in the pond to help keep some of the "grass" from becoming over abundant. Think of them as lawn mowers and allow some grass to grow and not kill all of it.

I agree with Bill. 2 or 3 should be plenty. They ARE getting around the age that they should be removed and new ones added, but at this point if you can get the majority out you should be good. If you start seeing too much underwater growth, just add 1 or 2.

Unless they are eating pellets in the pond, I don't know of any way to catch them. Bowfishing is about your only option, and doing that during the day is hard because they are spooky. It probably would be easier to do at night.

It is possible to catch carp with hook and line. We used to catch them for fun when I was a kid. We would fish with medium to heavy spinning tackle depending upon the size.

Read up on some good doughball recipes. Chum your fishing area for a few days before you plan to fish.

Then chum it at about 50% when you sit down to fish.

Set the hook lightly compared to bass fishing. Make sure your drag is properly set - they will give you a great fight.

Catching carp was something that I'd do as a kid and it wasn't hard at all. Chum with whole kernel canned corn, then fill a #2 Aberdeen hook with corn, cast it out to the chummed area. No weight, no bobber, 8# test line. Leave a belly in the line. When the belly started to get tight, pick up the rod and set the hook.

Triploid Grass Carp on the other hand are a whole 'nother ball game!

Clearly we need to develop some "corn kernel" feed trained triploid carp! They mow the ponds for 10-15 years, and then are easily caught for the next generation.

That would be nice. Even electroshocking isn't a sure thing. I shocked a customers pond 3x over a 6 year time frame and it wasn't until the last time that we shocked 2 TGC that the customer thought were dead. One was 50+#, the other was 39#. We had tried to establish underwater weeds for years with no success. This was a 4 acre, 12' deep pond. There might be more TGC in there as he doesn't remember how many were put in.

We had grass carp added over 20 years ago. For the last 10 years I have been trying to establish native vegetation to replace the alligator grass (the only thing nothing will eat). Just this year I'm finally seeing Illinois pond weed growing outside of cages. I think the damn grass carp may have finally died. I fed deer corn in my pond feeder this spring. I was told the grass carp would eat it, it would expand in their gut, and kill them. Maybe it worked? Our GC were over 4 feet long. Nothing but alligator weed grew outside of cages. 50 acre lake.