Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Another winter, entering spring (report)

This winter was like an old-fashioned winter of my youth, apart from starting a bit late. It was cold, never had a thaw, snowed a lot, and got the pond ice the thickest it has ever been. More than 18 inches.

My garden pond suffered a complete kill. My aerator tube froze up despite it being insulated, and the pond deicer disappeared under the snow, so I didn't know it stopped doing anything for a month. All koi fish and frogs, dead. It probably froze near to the bottom, despite being 3.5ft deep.

The 1/2 acre pond seems in good shape, but the center STILL has about 10 inches of ice in the middle, though it would be hard to get to it from the 1 ft of open water around the rim. Normally we are ice out by now, lots of March sun and multiple days above freezing do the trick.

This unfortunately has presented an interesting problem with my dock, as the pilons are still locked in ice, but the ice is otherwise a floating island held tenuously in place by my dock.

Last year the dock's posts got yanked upwards and out of the concrete footers when the water rose after getting locked in ice. This year, still loose, they are getting pushed off the concrete to the side.
It may be time to remove the end of the dock, replace with a ramp out to a floating dock platform I can pull out in the fall. After all, it already looks like a ramp down into the water.

Hey, at least no sign (yet) of any significant fish kill. Just a couple of small Black Crappie.

Unbelievably the ponds are mostly frozen over again. What a late spring cold snap!

While still open, I noticed the perch are quite preggers, but have not yet let go of the eggs. Most of the fish have been congregating under my sketchy dock out of the sun, so laying on it and watching I can see many of my fish family. Lots of fat mama perch this year! Way too many Black Crappy toothpicks. Only a single bass on which all depends to thin the herds of the BC. The walleye have not been keeping up!

While I was hanging about the pond last week on one of our few warm days this spring, my largest koi got a wild hare, and started breaching like crazy! Flinging its orange carcass clear out of the water several times in a row. I thought something was chasing it, but nothing was there. Assuming it is a fish's version of the zoomies.

I have not tried this but the last time the ice on my dock was moving around I thought it would take out the hole dock. So I was thinking ahead for the next year and bought a 40 lb. sack of salt. I would pour around posts so ice would melt there first. Small amount of salt like that would not hurt a pond. Just my 2 cents worth of advice.

ewest,

Thanks for the clarification. I was making a "tongue in cheek" response, which I see now was not completely obvious.

When I read the forum, I focus on the advice of the "experts" that I know have lots of valuable experience. I frequently forget that we have many new posters that have no way to properly weight the advice they see typed on the internet!

I weigh advice by how much it is in accord with what I wish. True, it doesn't always end well, but at least I feel good.

I pray you get some rain soon, Dave. But not too much at once! Hard to go into summer with things too dry.

Given events in Ukraine and Russia, grain shortages are likely. Sure hope they can get the crops in before much longer!