Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Dunns Fish Farm

Dave,

Are you asking about just ponds in the city in general or are you asking about the municipalities' ponds we stocked?

In any case, all the ponds in the "urban" part of town that we stocked with tilapia went great. Tilapia in urban areas has been successful for us in the past to help improve aesthetic value. As far as the relative weights of the game fish...that maybe the unknown. But, most of our clients that are in the urban area are mainly focused on aesthetics and water quality.

Thanks for asking!

BTW...what's up with everyone's signature lately...am I getting caught in the middle of a pissing match to find the oldest or most dedicated PB subscriber?

Well fine...here's mine...beat that!
----------------------
PondBoss subscriber before Lusk even had the glimmer in his eye.

Trent, I'm really mostly curious about cleaning up the water in the municipal duck ponds. Any info or responses?

As far as the signatures go; just boys with their toys.

Dave,

The tilapia in some of the ponds did the trick in keeping algae and duckweed under control...we didn't have to use algaecide while the tilapia were stocked.

In other ponds, seems the tilapia couldn't keep up with the demand, so we used some algaecides to help.

Of the thousands of fish we stocked last year, we didn't have ANY calls to come skim and remove dead fish - absolutely AMAZING! It was reported that the majority of the fish that died were eaten or sank to the bottom.

I hear ya on the sigs! Just pokin' fun!

Aw heck. When we talked last year about this project(s), I figured you were going to have some concerned citizens when the tilapia did their death spiral near shore. Most city ponds also have an abundance of turtles. BURP!

I'll just thought that since I started this thread I had better say something. I posted the start of the thread just before heading out of town on vacation, so it went off without me.

It was very good discussion. My opinions about Dunn's fish farm can go without saying... especially since this thread has wound itself up and down again.

For those of you wondering what my particular opinion is....I agree with George and Bob.

I have no opinion either way for Dunns, or the Free Fish Truck guy because I have never dealt with them. I do, however, value the opinions of people that I respect.

Even the most shady businesses have some "happy" customers. Many say that a successful business has a batting average of "just above" average meaning that all business have some unsatisfied clients for whatever reasons.

I think that if a person has the benefit of Pond Boss, it will be very hard for a fish seller to take advantage of that individual.

It does bother me when a business takes advantage of an uninformed person. Unfortunately, this happens every day in all types of businesses.

When a business has a history of taking advantage of clients, that is usually enough for a tarnished reputation especially among their industry piers.

I have purchased from Dunn's on a couple of occasions. Once before PB & once afterward. Needless to say, I was much happier doing business with them with some knowledge in hand. I will gladly take the blame for being an uneducated consumer...and they will gladly have to take the blame for being an "uneducating" supplier.

This is my 1st post after lurking for quite some time (unfortunately, not long enough). I purchased 400 LMB, 1000 CC and 20 lbs FHM from Dunns in the Fall of '04 for a 6 acre pond. I had not heard of Pond Boss at the time. I must say, they brought me exactly what I asked for and I did not have any die off. Now I fear I have too many fish. Most notably, CC.

We purchased the property in April '04, I fished it all Summer and caught nothing but BG. The pond was full of them. The bass have thrived and grew from 3" to 3 lbs in 12 months.

I have not fished for the CC yet but I know they are there. Now that I have confessed my sins, what do I need to do to make ammends?

Oh yeah, with this drought, my pond has gone from 6 acres to just under 4.

Thanks for your help and I will be posting more in the future as I have many questions.

1) Find some friends and/or neighbors who like CC and have a catfishing contest.

2) Share catfish recipes with the rest of us here who have more CC than we want.

Are you feeding ? How big are the CC now (heck, you'll have to catch some just to find out).

Sandbox, those stocking numbers don't seem way out of line for a 6 acre pond. It is a lot of channel cats to leave without harvesting a good bit.

Some people say that when you stock CC (without feeding), that you don't see them for two years. But when you do.......

Theo is right about starting to fish specifically for CC and to start harvesting some.

Thank you both for the suggestions and support. I do feed with one feeder and it has run all Winter (what there has been of it). I feed twice per day about what can be consumed in about 5 min.

Not knowing diddly-squat about this, my plan has been to start going after them this Spring. I did catch two last Fall on artificial lures. There was some disparity. One was 16" 1.5 lbs. The other was 23" 2.5 lbs.

My hope is the population won't grow but, as I look back on it now, I wish I had spread the CC stocking over 2 or 3 years. A 3lb catfish is just about right by my way of thinking.

Another newbie question while I'm at it... Is it possible to have too many BG? Most of what we catch are 4-6 inches but have caught many in the 9" range. I have just been throwing them all back to keep the forage going.

The goal of the pond is good fishing for my boys, friends and family with LMB in the 5 lb range. I have been thinking of keeping everything over 1.5 lbs starting this Spring. I also want to make some improvements for duck hunting but that is another story.

SandBox,

You may get a few more replies if you start a new thread for your question.

Generally speaking, I don't think you are in terrible shape. You can tell a lot about a pond by looking at the lower end of the food chain. How is the bluegill population holding up? I would suspect the bass have put a hurting on them and it is time to start culling some bass. How many depends on your goals. If you want trophy bass you need to remove quite a few. I am not sure if it is better to wait until after they spawn or not. I would certainly remove some CC as well but rest assured they probably will not reproduce successfully in your bass heavy pond.

Yes, you can have too many bluegills but I doubt you will have that problem. You stocked a good number of bass and they will keep the bluegill numbers in check. Do you have any BG under 4"? That population may have been eradicated by your young bass. As the LMB grow they will start feeding on some bigger bluegills as well. Maintaining the correct number of bass is the key to acheiving your goals.

Just for the record. Do you know what kind of LMB you stocked? Northern, F1, Florida, other

In addition to Jayman's comments:

It would be helpful to know specifically what kind of sunfish you have. They could be Bluegill, Coppernose Bluegill, Green Sunfish, RedEar, Pumpkinseed, Hybrid Bluegill.

Each of those listed above have pros and cons associated with them.

From what I've read here on the forum the standard Bluegill and the Coppernose Bluegill would make the best forage fish for the LMB and maybe the Channel Cats.

If your LMB are getting to 3lbs and bigger, you may not need to worry about removing any of those fish you refer to as bluegills, but may want to add some pure bluegills (which would need to be 4-5" when stocked so as not to become fish food).

JayMan, I think you may be right about where this post belongs. I went ahead and pulled the trigger here because of the discussion of Dunns suggested stocking rates. I backed off considerably from their suggested numbers because for even a novice like me, they just didn't seem to make sense. Even the numbers I did go with are probably too high. Dunns advertises their bass to be Florida Hybrid/Northern.

Sunil, I am pretty comfortable in stating that these are standard Bluegill and have not seen any signs of green sunfish, coppernose or any other variety. I still see many in the sub 4" range but certainly not as many as there were before introducing the bass. I am even seeing minnows which was somewhat surprising to me.

I would be happy to start another post elsewhere if you feel that would be best. I just wanted to hold off until I get more information such as a water quality test.

If they are standard bluegill, you may not need to do much else besides culling some Channel Cats.

With the sizes of LMB that you've described, you should be seeing some younger LMB. Within the next year, if not sooner, may be a good time to start some type of LMB slot limit culling program.

Just out of curiosity, what were the suggested stocking numbers vs. what you actually stocked?

The suggested rate was 100 LMB/acre and 700 CC/acre. My pond is kind of an odd situation since it is at least 10 years old and had nothing but BG so I knew I had a lot of forage. This pond will get such little fishing pressure (we live 2 hrs away), there is no way I could control that many CC's.

I had no idea what to expect with the size and growth rate of the bass. The smallest we were catching in October was 16.5" and 2.5 lbs. After reading many of the posts on this site, I am fearfull of a population explosion of bass. Since I am not after trophy specimens, and all of the discussion around lure-shy bass, I am leaning toward keeping everything over 1.5 to 2 lbs starting this Spring.

I did not mean to change the direction of this post and will open up a new one elsewhere when I have more specific questions. Thanks for your patience and help.

Sandbox:

Welcome to the forum. It would be good to know for certain what was in the pond prior to your stocking in order to address the situation. I would not think that a 3in. LMB would grow to 3lbs in onr year. Under a standard RW table a 3 lb. LMB is 17.5 in. in length. It usually takes a 3 yr.+- old fish to get there . There can be exceptions though and 14 mths. would be an exception. That makes me wonder if there were LMB in there before and if so it changes the situation.

It would be good for you to learn to do a pond assessment. This consists of 1 catch survey 2 sein survey and 3 visual survey. Keep notes on length and weight of BG and LMB and CC you catch. With good sun glasses go and look for small BG LMB and CC and get an idea of numbers. When june gets here do a sein survey with a 20 ft. 1/4 in sein. See link below pg 15 on how to do and what the results mean. These results will give you the info needed to make a judgment on what , if any thing to do.

http://msucares.com/pubs/publications/p1428.pdf

Here is the Ark. Pond Mgt. Book see pg 9 for same info.

http://www.uaex.edu/wneal/Pond_Management/pdf/MP360final.pdf

No problem with the posts. If you want to start a new one then just copy the last few posts and add them to new place and we can go from there.

Your bass growth sounds pretty good. Maybe a suggestion is to remove any bas between 10-14" in length, but I understand what you are saying about lure-shy LMB.

700 CC / acre sounds high to me. Interesting thing about CC is that they are not too expensive, so it's not as if a fish supplier would make crazy money overstocking CC.

As far as getting this thread off topic, it happens. But as long as the original topic got you to finally make some inputs, it's all good.

Really, we are still discussing what Dunn's recommended for stocking.

So if we did the math for your 6 acre pond, was Dunn's suggesting 4,200 CC, 600 LMB, and maybe 120lbs of fatheads?

EDIT: My math was off on the CC

Roughly. Closer to 4000 CC though. I just looked back at my receipt and saw that I stocked 40 lbs of minnows which is probably light but, I figured I had more than enough BG.

I couldn't eat that many CC in a lifetime. And with the drought we have had, no telling what shape the pond would be in. Even 600 bass sounded high. I wanted enough to be able to find them but not so many that the population would quickly get beyond my ability to manage.

To be fair to Dunn's, they did not try to discourage me from my numbers when I explained my situation. It was more of a situation that I could have used a little more guidance than just my gut feel.

ewest, thanks for the information. I will be the first to admit I have a ong way to go. Heck, I haven't even started. I can only assume the bass were from my stocking as the first Summer we did not see or catch a bass. By the beginning of last Summer, we started seeing bass about 8' in length and caught the 1st bass in July that was 10". In September and October, everything we caught was within 2" of each other. By late October, all bass caught were between 16.5" and 18" and weighed between 2.5lbs to 3.3lbs.

The sample was not that large. We maybe caught 25 bass all season because I did not intend to keep them. We kept only about half a dozen in Oct as they were too good to pass up.

I definitely think you may be right about the catfish though. The size difference between the 2 we did catch leads me to believe there may have been some there already. It has only been in the last two months that the catfish have started coming to the feeder.

I definitely need to be more scientific about my surveys and log book. I just figured I wouldn't have to worry about it the 1st year and honestly, I didn't find you guys until mid Summer of last year. I will change my ways this year.

I'm too new to this to figure out how to move posts.

Sandbox :

I will copy all the posts relating to your situation and put it under " Sandbox Pond".
Easy to find and we can go from there.

All the posts about Sandbox's pond are going forward from this link ;

http://www.pondboss.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=7&t=000297

Reply to them there not here.

A friend in the industry forwarded this string to me. Here is my thought and opinion on this subject. I have worked for Dunn's for nearly 5 years, we have many employee's some been with us for more than 25 years. Our philosophy, has always sided with the best interest of the customer. It's obvious we would not have been in the industry this long, if we had an abundance of dissatisfied customers. We service 13 states with over 1100 stops. Our frequency in those areas can range 6-8 weeks. I think you can agree that we can have dissatisfied customers. If a dissatisfied customer calls, we will do everything possible to rectify the situation. I also field calls, emails, and complaints on other people in this industry, as well. No one is beyond scrutiny. Its my personal philosophy not to bad mouth anyone in this industry. Customers need to be informed and obviously people will stop doing business with those companies. We work hard providing our service and products to the public. We most likely attend more shows and perform more personal on-site consultations than anyone in the industry. Lastly, as we all know, every pond is different and has unique needs and this can change if your located in Texas, South Carolina, New Mexico, or Nebraska. I would be glad to discuss stocking rates on Hybrid Bluegill and Coppernose. I will try to visit this forum more often. It is a good service.

Bill, thanks for the explanation. I expected you to respond. It's a shame anyone must defend themselves. And, as you read through this thread, I have not badmouthed you guys. I only stated facts. One of those facts still lingers in my mind. You guys never addressed the issues I brought to your attention two years ago in Mesquite. You personally asked me to write the letter. You got it, and I never received the courtesy of a reply. So, my statements stand as noted. If you guys ever choose to address your stocking recommendations compared with those recognized as industry standards (American Fisheries Society), my opinion could change. I hope you can empathize...you asked me to write a letter, email it to you, and you would sit down with the boss, talk it over and he would respond. It never happened. Consequently, Pond Boss stands by its philosophies and opinions. We are consistent, and will remain so.