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Does it have a garlicky smell when crushed? If so it appears to be chara

Most plastics have a specific gravity very near that of water. This means that most plastic will barely float, barely sink, or suspend mid water column. You will want something to weigh it down, otherwise it's highly likely to move on you.

Are the culverts double wall corrugated? If so, I would cut/drill many holes on each rib to help it waterlog. If it is double wall...the ribs may be a good place to pour some wetted sack-crete in to weigh them down.

Makes my head hurt.

Think I will just keep feeding for the fun of it rather than performance.

Just got home yesterday after being gone for three and a half months. Drove the 4-wheeler around the pond once (amongst the three foot tall grass on the dam that needed mowed a month ago) and fish wakes coming toward the shore. They have not forgot what the dinner bell is. Guess I need to get some feed bought. At least the fish think I do.

Had a great time camping. Mostly goofing off. Did spend some time fishing, had a few get away from me, culled a 1lber and caught a healthy looking 2.5lber.

I did actually walk (hopping over the bad mud) to my island and fished a bit from the other side. Had some bites but I still suck at hooksetting.

Rain still going around the farm and not hitting it direct Maybe enough rain will hit the river so the creek can go back to filling me up that way? Wishful thinking...

So, Rod, is that you in the camo waders??

X 2

Sounds like he is doing his favorite thing - happy birthday 2ya

My SMB pond always has a bumper crop of Bullfrog tadpoles. My LMB pond never has any to be seen. The two ponds are about 75 yards apart.

Friend of mine took me to 4 acre pond yesterday, It was great! We harvested 40 RES 9 to 11 inch and 19 blue gill 9 to 10 inch. It was full off bass we saw small ones everywhere caught 15. That is what I would love to turn this pond stocking into. The RES hit worms, jigs, road runner, and the blue gill crickets and worms. I am thinking about going 300 CNBG and at least 100 to 200 more RES, they fillet like crappie at 10 to eleven inches thick and had shoulders. Then I add 100 bass in october, just thought I would share that. Thanks again, I maybe totally wrong but I think reason people don't catch shellcracker is they do not stock enough, this guy said he stocked this lake/pond ten years ago with 1000 BG and 1000 RES. We caught 2 to 1 RES, I never fished a good bream pond that did not have lots of bass!

Frank, Al has a similar project going but it will be his neighbor's trophy pond. A goldilocks quantity of big brooding BG that will flood the pond with 1" to 3" BG for limited number of Female BG. I'm excited to see where this takes the LMB. A forage pond is kind of small and this will limit one when it comes to producing as many large fish as you might otherwise be able to grow. But I get the theme which I think has merit, separate food availability so that rations are not limiting for the few LMB on trophy path. So I will just throw a few things out.

Instead of the forage pond, what if you trained trophy path to eat fish that are too big for them to eat. So this would involve a decent sized cage for training that would be at the dock. It would also involve large Z-Traps that are constructed of pvc and seine mesh (I am talking 4' x 4' x 2.5' size). What you would do is throw a few LMB into the cage and you would train them to eat 6" to 9" BG that are cut into chunks. Kind of like lump pellets. And you could train them on those too. Your forage pond could supply replacement in the 1-3 in lengths. So everyday twice a day go out clank a pipe (clank clank) and then proceed to train/feed. If some of the LMB don't learn, kill them and use them for chuck food. Tag and release the rest and now train more. When you clank clank, the release fish will come to and so you might want to feed them first and clank clank again before training the captives. Use LMB culls and BG that the Large LMB may be having trouble capturing. The advantage is that you are providing high quality rations to a limited number of fish. If you are short on fish to chunk in this way, some feed lumps would give the LMB some supplement food.

You need around 48 or so in your impoundment and so imagine 6 fish per acre averaging 36 lbs/acre (6 lbs per fish) for a total weight of 288 lbs in your 8 acre impoundment. The total maintenance for such a population is ~1500 lbs (wet weight) a year. If provided over 150 days you would need 10 lbs of fish chunks per day. If you split it half fish have feed lumps ... then you would need 4 bags of lumps and 5 lbs of fish chunks per day (on average). It would take a little more to factor growth but with a starting weight of 48 lbs (assuming 1lb LMB for training) growing to 288 lbs over three years we are talking 80 lbs gain/year which would require ~ 800 lbs of Forage or 160 lbs of lump. Ideally, in year 3 you would cull at 1 per acre/year and add one per acre year. Since we are just exercising our imaginations of what is possible.

For fish you eat, you may be surprised to know the carcass dry weight probably is some where in the neighborhood of 35% protein. Mixed with whole fish on an equal weight basis this renders 53.5 % protein feed. Now there is a remarkable amount of phosphorus and calcium in such a homemade feed but this came from the pond so it won't hurt your pond as long you are controlling the addition of other nutrient inputs. Seems to me like a way to assist a ponds nutrient cycling while gaining weight on the largest predators which usually have a tougher time of finding appropriately sized prey. You probably wouldn't want to get as deep in the woods as making your own feed from fish carcasses and fresh fish but I think a binding agent like corn starch at 5% dry weight or less might be sufficient binding to form hydrated lumps (though I am probably wrong about that ... its just I am imagining you doing it successfully. I might try a hand at it next year and share how bad or good it works out)

catscratch, I've been very pleased with the HSB in my pond. They flourished for several years even without TFS, though I now stock TFS annually.

HSB will compete with LMB, so better to stock a limited number and see how things go.

Pat, I'm not sure. I'm not sure how the forum plays with phones.

azteca,

Do your toads only spawn once per year, or can you induce them to have some additional spawns?

Watch the way the fry moves around and you can see after a while bg and minnows act different

Thanks.

I was hoping your band of large rock would have diffused the water flow pathways enough that the runoff did not create those erosive channels in your side slopes so quickly.

Dang, moving water is impressive in its erosive power!

Still hoping your pond is full soon - so it can switch over to just aquatic conditions.

Throwing feed in on pier in about 4’ water there is a 5-7# lmb that gives the bg what for…. Knocking them out of the water…. Not sure she is catching any but she has been there almost every day at various times … wanting to rid of a bunch of bg…. Fun to watch

I’m not sure about solar. Ours is hardwired. Here’s the website.
https://www.deepglow.com/

Thanks Scott, they do have some good deals. Mine's 10X60, and it's still too small. I'm feeding near the dock, so most of the CNBG should be in that area. That'll help a lot.

It seems as though we've had our first spawn. I'm seeing dozens of 1/2 to 3/4" fry swimming in algae at the top end of the pond. I started feeding them fish food dust this morning. A few did come to it, so hopefully they'll train the others.

I’m in NC. I think it’s fine here.

Kenny, I agree that the degree of precision is very important. Like you I would prefer mm and grams because these units lend to very good degree of precision for fish that are > 5" in length. mm and grams are easy to read from scales and tapes.

That said. A similar degree of precision can be obtained if one has sufficiently sensitive measuring tools. For example, if a English unit tape is divided into 1/32 of an inch AND if the one taking the measurement doesn't take shortcuts of rounding then the degree of precision is actually just a tiny bit better than mm. Even so, a tape with mm is the hammer and the 1/32" scale is a rock. I would much rather drive a nail with hammer and than a rock because it is the most appropriate tool. So same goes for the tape. Your measurement will not need conversion into decimal notation and it is far easier and faster to take the measurement very accurately with a tape graded in mm.

A weight scale needs to have sufficient sensitivity to measure small increments of change. Some scales display a greater degree of precision than they are actually sensitive to. But if grams are the degree of precision sought, the scale must be sensitive to 1 gram increments. So this is easily checked (though most instruments declare sensitivity) by adding the increment to an existing weighed item and checking to see if the increment registers. If measuring in pounds on a decimal scale the scale must provide measurement in 1 thousandths of lbs and be sensitive to register .001 lb increments.

The problem with rounding and degree of precision is very much exacerbated with fish at the smaller end of the spectrum becoming more muted with large fish.

In looking over the LMB in the table, I think the surveyors may have attained a very acceptable degree of precision. The length measurements seem to be incremented to the nearest .05". So the tape was probably 1/10 graded with possible 1/2 ticks. Whether the tenths were half ticked or not, the data collected suggests that the measurements take were taken with care either to the finest degree of precision graded on the tape or possibly making additional effort to record precision finer than the tape graduation. The nearest .05 (1/20th) inch is a little larger than a millimeter by ~ 0.27 mm. So on the first fish, assuming a very accurate measurement to the nearest .05 inch the variation or uncertainty in relative terms is less than 9 parts in 10,000. Don't know if this alarmed you but the number of exactly 13" did catch my attention. With degree of precision at 0.05 this did seem a little odd but that doesn't of course mean that they were not 13" to the nearest 0.05"

On the weight end, increments of 0.01 lbs is about 4.5 times greater than grams. Assuming the sensitivity to 0.01 lbs the uncertainty of measurement relative to a gram sensitive instrument is about 4.5 parts in 1000 for first and lightest fish. The parts uncertainty for larger fish is less than that. All in all, there was sufficient precision here I think but one surely does not want to pull out a fish de-liar and round to the nearest quarter or half inch. This would yield results that are not very accurate.

Thanks Kelly!!

Looks like bushy pondweed. https://aquaplant.tamu.edu/plant-identification/alphabetical-index/southern-naiad/

It also depends on when the LMB are available. We've stocked the BG in the Spring and came back in the Fall to stock the LMB because they weren't available in the Spring. Stock the correct amount for your pond goals and either Spring or Fall will work up here.

Tilapia will eat the duckweed. Adding more small Tilapia to the bigger pond sure won't hurt. We won't be stocking Tilapia until the end of the month, while the surface water temp is warm enough now to stock them (77°F today), the water temp at 5' water depth was only 62°F.

How's the pond behind the house looking?

Jerry:

Slip the bigger pipe over the metal pipe. Get some long self tapping screws. Drill clearance holes in the plastic pipe, run them into the rusting inner metal pipe. Use 4-6 screws. That is only temp fix because the rusting pipe is also rusting under the ground and at some point in the future it will have to be dug up and replaced.