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Nice SMB, SetterGuy!!!!

The pond has never achieved full pool since it was dry last August after the 2nd major rebuild/application. It has fluctuated 8-12 inches all summer and has been low 4 1/2 to 5 feet since March of 2022. This last and more significant construction effort did nothing to slow down the seep/ leak.

The silver lining I suppose is that we have a much wider dam that will do a better job holding back the last 4-5 feet of fill, assuming it fills over winter. It will also be a lot easier to the backside of the dam since was graded less steep with more material.

Try some Crystal hot sauce. You can thank me later.

Ive got a bunch of photos and stuff on my IG. polkpasturedpork

We got stupidly lucky to be honest.
No animals lost, just needed to re capture the pigs. Chickens were fine.

Crazy amounts of water, having all my neighbors watershed coming into my property is what filled my pond up 4', plus the river overflow.

It could have been worse. Originally we were supposed ot have the southern bands and not much else, then a direct hit, eventually we only got the NORTHERN bands of rain and wind with no thunder.

MASSIVE trees down everywhere. Its shocking how many HUGE trees in the are afell towards the road and not onto houses.

At one point in the storm I ran up on my neighbors roof to help them remove enough of a small fallen tree to throw a tarp I gave them on it to cover some small holes.

All the biggest trees in my area fell on poles/wires.

I lived on a 3 block area that had power the whole time, rest of the entire city was out for at least half a day.
Internet was out for 2 days.

Thanks for the offer, wont be anytime soon, harvest 1/2 done and started a house for the daughter for this fall.

Rod, you may or may not "see" active BG on the beds every time. And yeah, the word "definitely" is sometimes dangerous because to me, it signifies a measure of certainty. For me to say "you definitely have a lack of spawning habitat" would be an assumption on my part and assumptions get me in trouble.
Fish are amazing critters.. they seem to get off a spawn of some sort even in the worst conditions (more accurately-what WE see as worst conditions) yet spawns may not be as good as we would expect with great conditions for the same reason.
I don't think it's bad advise, I just think based on my experience it's a bold assumption. 50/50 chance either way. This falls into the "it depends" category.
My point is the BG are going to dish out bottom and try to spawn even if substrate isn't perfect. I think hatch rates and survival are results of better areas and materials, and really didn't mean there is right and wrong, just good, bad and better.
I seen no activity this year after the TP ran the BG out early..have no clue where the BG nested but very obvious they made it happen.
I don't know what the OP's capabilities are but I can also say if yoy aren't showing up in a trap-doesn't mean they ain't there but I didn't see any young until mid Aug in the traps. I trap when the WT hits 60 until it drops to 50. I remove every BG I catch because I have no LMB, so I grow the BG and sell'em.
As the water goes down this fall, I'll see where they made nests but I haven't found them yet.

They will acclimate fairly quickly without a lot of pressure from predation. Problem with a net block is concentrating fish for avian predators. If you have lots of bass laying in wait, it's a double-edged sword.
May I ask what size BG/RES you are stocking?

Snipe - Good beneficial and helpful information. Very good information about your frost free days, growing season and history of your CNBG. Thank you for sharing and posting.

Very good information. Thank you for the ideas and work efforts.

Thanks for the reply. I tried to find who makes it, it just takes me to OWS. I didn't try real hard tho.

I had another thought today when looking at OWS catalog. They have a direct drive solar setup. Meaning it doesn't NEED batteries to power it. If the sun is shining, it runs. I'm thinking about getting that pump. Run an alternator and have batteries (which I have some gel cells). That pump claims 2.2 or 2.8 cfm. But it would be consistent. I would need a steady 10mph wind (whatever rpm) to get that with the other pump

What do you guys think?

Theo, My dad used to say, when using them for fence post, that the posts will outlast the post holes, I'm not sure about that but I do know them darn things got so hard after many yrs that you couldn't drive a fence staple into them. I know, I crushed many a thumb and forefinger when I was a kid trying to drive staples into them damn things.

With the e-shock survey, if there are no places in the lake to "trap" the fish in the current, then getting enough current to the fish to stun them is hard. You have to speed up the boat to get the fish "in" the electricity or as soon as they feel the slightest bit of a tingle they scoot off and get out of the current "halo" area.

Trees laying down in the water, fingers of land going out into the water, etc., are all good places to hold fish, and those places are good places to shock up fish.

If you have to run the boat fast to get the fish "in" the electricity, that speed makes it all the harder to net any fish that DO get stunned.

Lol, the concrete culverts are still on bank. Haven't quite figured out how I'm going to position them yet. But I have done more to the pond. Lengthened stone/rubble point that I had started further into the pond and planning on some more structure. I've been lurking but not much to post about. Catching 21-22 inch bass once in a while. They are relatively fat for the summer we've had but not where I would like them. I may be asking too much in that department though.

Run it long enough to keep an ice free area that's about 10% of the total pond surface. You might be able to get away with 5% but I'd err on the side of caution. No specific run time.

I am lazy, I let mine run 24/7,

The most important time to run them is at night into the early morning hours.

My 25 gallon sprayer is 12v. It sits nicely on the rear deck of my boat. I fill it with the livewell pump. With 20-25 foot range, I just sit up front on the trolling motor and spray away.

Near as I can determine, liquid calcium carbonate hits quickly because it is effectively pre-dissolved. It can take crushed limestone up to 6 months to dissolve. The liquid will not have as long lasting an effect because there isn't as much real material present. You get a fast but short lived adjustment. It's ok for one season row crops but not what I want in a lake.

For east Texas lake managers, we can get crushed limestone out of Idabel and Hugo, OK. The price is $6 a ton. Hauling it to Tyler is $36-40 a ton. So less than 1/2 my quote. It's not the "super fine" that comes out of Georgetown, TX, but 3/16" and smaller. Loads are 25 tons per truck. I didn't ask about smaller loads.

Welcome to the forum! We have some simple forum rules, here's a link to what they are:

https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92424#Post92424

Also there is this:

https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=318186#Post318186

I just threw these up in case you didn't see them previously.

Cody Note: Linetta - are you here to sell something? Do you have a pond???

The pond owner ended up getting a small aeration unit the first week of August '22, and since then, no more dead floaters.

We throw out Optimal Bluegill (the long cylindrical type), and we pretty much only see fatheads feeding which had been making me think we lost most all of the stocked fish. A large subset of the (85) adult bluegill we had stocked used to hit feed on the surface, but not anymore.

Yesterday, I stocked (40) more Yellow Perch 2-3" long, (40) Bluegill <2", and (6) HSB 4-5", and (6) CC 5-6".


I actually caught a healthy adult bluegill on a waxworm yesterday too. It hit the worm at about 6' below a small bobber.

This pond continues to be a mystery.

Water temps are around 60 degrees.

Might give Anderson Minnows a call.. Their Black salty is supposedly a cross of Carp (koi) and some type of goldfish.

Ted, talk to them and see if you need to move the probe at a certain speed to get an accurate reading. IIRC the YSI membrane probes have to be moved at a rate of 1 foot per second and they take up to 15 minutes to warm up and stabilize once turned on.

I use a YSI optical O2 meter. No need to move the probe, and it reads within a minute or so of turning on. But it is a bit more pricey than the Hanna unit.

Here's a photo of the 9.5" perch. My father did some more sampling last night and caught perch from 6-8". I'm supposing the larger specimens are the well fed females. Excited to see some ribbons next spring!

https://ibb.co/cYCFmfW

Anyone have a good reference for relative weight and YP? Also anyone have any good ideas about harvesting them with HSB present? The hope would be able to harvest a mess or two of YP each year once established, I wasn't sure if anyone had reccomendations on a harvest rate if there is a succesful spawn. I assume it may be dependent on how well the spawn does, and how many fingerlings survive predation.

Welcome to the forum!

I suck at catching minnows in my "minnow" traps. Last time out, I caught GSF and bullheads. If I did have some minnows, I figure the larger fish might have eaten them in the confined space before I ran the trap.

I am doing better at seining. My best technique now is to set the seine up in the riffles above a pool with the float line suspended in the air to the upstream side. Throw some dog food in the seine and then splash through the pool. Pick up the weighted bottom line of the seine and then I can work through everything suspended in the net at a leisurely pace.

My creek is soft sand, so I just tie each rope of my little 10' seine to the top of a stick. I can jam them in the sand and make a nice basket.

I still like Zep's Pic #2 design as the best option so far. (Of course, it may look good to me because it is crossing a mountain stream!)

That design requires much fewer materials. I like having the hand rail.

I also likes RAH's addition of the sand paint to walking surface.

I have never planed a long timber with my chainsaw. Does anyone know if an average "craftsman" would cut a suitably flat and level walking surface?

Bob-O was smiling during the membership toasting.