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Foodeefish,
Don’t add the oaks! Some members on this forum have had complete fish kills in their ponds. I know DD1 had that happen to him. Many have suggested using cedar as it will last longer and give better cover for your forage fish.

Correct, for a lifetime actually.

Much appreciated. I passed on that property but may be signing a contract for another 2 acre property very soon, which has a nice area for a pond. My next questions will probably be around the costs to dig/build a pond.

If you buy the Hawke scope, please let us know how you like it. The scopes that came with both of my crossbows have both green and red lighted reticles. They need them because the optics are not as good as the unlighted Leupold scope, but the lighted reticles do not make up for the low light performance of the Leupold. I have found that the red works best at dusk and the green works best at dawn. I use a laser range finder when hunting to avoid math LOL...

I have an Osprey and now a mature Bald Eagle showing up. I prefer them vs the Great Blue Heron.

As the water temps have begun to cool this fall the BG and RES have slowed down feeding, but the HSB and SMB have been absolutely crushing at pellet time.

Tuesday evening when I fed it was like they had vanished. Wednesday wasn't much different.

Thursday I get a text message on my phone, "Hey, it's Adam. We delivered your minnows on Monday."

Mystery solved. lol

Don't forget a 50 micron filter to stop any nasties from the river from getting into the pond.
NOTE - I think esshup means 500 micron not 50micron. 500um catches all fish eggs and newly hatched fish fry plus just about all macroinvertebrates.

Thanks all. I think the fact that they are juvenile also makes it more difficult. That, coupled with mis-identified fish on google searches can make one's head spin.

I have heard that Whitetails will out compete Mulies in areas where they overlap and yes, I believe I have heard of interbreeding.

Short answer in my opinion is no.

Aeration helps reduce muck buildup by providing O2 for the bacteria to thrive in deep water to chew up the organics. In shallow water there is enough O2 (I'm talking under 6, 7 foot water depth).

To reduce the amount of muck/sediment build up you really need to construct settling pond/silt trap ponds in the watershed prior to the water entering the lake, and clean those out every 2 years.

For crappie, both FHM and Golden Shiners are good forage fish, the shiners might get too large for the crappie to eat, but a few single sex LMB would take care of that problem.

Speed is of the essence when delivering fish, the less time you spend at the pond means you can get more deliveries done during a day. It's not like you jump in the truck and hit the road. It takes 1-2, maybe more hours to load the truck with the fish, then it takes at least an hour after returning to sterilize/clean everything. Add in the drive time between deliveries and sometimes you can only make 2-3 deliveries in a 10 hour day and that is if you eat lunch while you are driving. If it takes 45 minutes to deliver the fish at a pond, and 1/2 hour to drive to another pond, that is 3 1/4 hours right there out of the day to make 1 delivery. Add the time it takes to measure out the salt/chemicals that go into the fish haul tanks, the time it takes to fill/replace O2 tanks on the haul truck, etc, etc. there is a lot of time that goes into a single day of delivering fish. My fish delivery days are typically 12+ hours long..........

750 bluegill would have weighed between 40# and 100#, depending on the size of the fish. 4" Bluegill weigh approximately 40#/1000 fish, 6" Bluegill weigh a wee bit over 100#/1,000 fish.

Hauling rates in tanks could be up to 1#/gallon of water, depending on the size of the fish and how long they are in the tank. Depending on how the delivery truck was set up, they could have put the LMB, HSB and CC in the same tank. The bluegills in another and the Fatheads/Shiners in a 3rd tank, although it's much more common to run the minnows in separate tanks and weigh them out on-site. But they could have weighed/counted the fish before putting them in the tanks so the guy delivering the fish didn't have to do that at the pond, but then he most likely would have moved away from the pond and dumped the water - no point in hauling that water around with no fish in it. I agree with Sunil, the HSB are very sensitive to being crowded during moving the fish, and they wipe the slime coat off of their neighbors if crowded. Even netting them out of the tank you don't want to have too many in the net because of that.

Approximately 8# of fish displace 1 gallon of water. Unless the buckets of water had screw-in lids, there is no way to put 40# of fish in a bucket, and if you did you'd better be about 30 seconds to a minute away from first putting fish in the bucket to dumping them in the pond. I typically fill the 5 gal bucket about half full of water and then put fish in it, and I use screw on lids so the fish don't slosh out. To minimize the length of time at each pond acclimating the fish, we typically check water temp in the pond/holding tanks here, then adjust the water temp in the haul tanks so it mimics the pond water temp so we don't have to spend the time acclimating the fish at the customers pond. You shouldn't have more than a 3 degree temp difference for transferring fish, and it takes 20-30 minutes to acclimate the fish to a 10°F temp change. For big orders, you can pump water from the pond to the holding tanks on the truck, but it's not practical for small orders, and I will not do that period due to bio security reasons unless the whole truck is getting delivered to one pond because then the whole truck needs to be sterilized before loading any more fish. I've done this enough I can judge how much ice/no ice to put in the tanks to ensure that the water is the correct temp at the pond to stock fish without having to temper them much if at all.

Speaking of bio security, that is a big deal today for most fish haulers and rightly so. I use buckets to dip water out of the tank and use nets to get the fish from the tanks. The buckets that touch the tank do not touch the buckets that are used to stock the fish in the pond. The nets used to get the fish from the tanks do not touch pond water. If any of them do, such as a net wen stocking large quantities of fish into a pay lake where I can net from the tanks and turn, walk a few steps and put the fish in the pond, I sterilize the net(s) and tanks when I get back. Some hatcheries go as far as having you walk thru a sterilizing solution to sterilize your shoes/boots before you can walk inside the building.

I cannot find bluegill anywhere from my Arkansas suppliers that are bigger than 3 1/2". My suppliers said they are selling fish so fast that they don't have time to grow them larger, and that next year they don't expect to have the advanced size fish either because they are selling ALL the fish that they can grow - they can't keep them for the 2 years that is needed to get to grow to the advanced sizes. The largest LMB that is available now is 4".

They could have purchased the fish earlier in the year and grew them bigger, or grew their own. The hatcheries that I know of hatch the LMB and grow them larger on feed in tanks and have to grade them weekly by the 1/4" until they are around 3" then they can up the sorting to 1/2". If not they lose too many due to cannibalism.

Just a note on what happened to my little pond (1/4 acre). It was so full of crawdads that all you needed to do was dip a pole net in and you would have caught a couple craws. Water looked like a mud puddle. Then new 1 1/2 acre pond was made right next to it stocked with bluegill, bass and catfish. Within 2 years we had green sunfish in both ponds. The green sunfish ate all the craws. There is not a one to be caught. Also green sunfish have over populated and are only 3 inches long. So in my opinion I would say a pond with bass would keep them under control. One note that I should say is there is no rock or trees in pond so they have no where to hide.

JP how did you pond cleaning go? If it was like mine, it didn't turn out as successful as I had hoped... I'm wanting to learn more about dredges now, since even with a big excavator we couldn't get very far out into the middle of the pond... and the comments about a lot of fill, make sure you pay attention to those. I didn't get very much dug out of my pond, but it sure generated a lot of soil to deal with... I'm hoping it will dry in much less than a year so I can get on it and work it down so it doesn't look so rough... I'm a little afraid that the muck that I wasn't able to remove, will now flow into the deep spots I was able to create and I'll be back in need to clean more out of the pond... Guess we'll see... Later J

Happy BD a little belated Leigh Ann! Thank you for all you do the keep the wheels turning.

You bet. When I get were I am going, I'll add it to this thread. In the meantime, anyone who has a good fish taco recipe feel free to post it!

Fish tacos are awesome!

Thanks all! I thought you might enjoy that link. wbuffetjr, brookies are so good that I named my daughter Brooke! Then again, I named my first born son after a bow company back in the day. I guess you can tell my heart has always been in the outdoors! Give God all the praise and glory, enjoy the little time we have in His outdoors. Have fun y’all while we are all trying to figure it out.

Them're some big mudbugs!

Holy smokes! I've never seen one larger than 7# at my place, though I had one on that may have been a lot bigger. Just took off and kept going, nothing I could do to even slow it.

I'd thought HSB topped out around 10# in ponds, but if they live more than a decade in a well fed pond maybe not. Sure would be nice to hook a biggun!

I'll see what I can figure out on the pictures... It turned into kind of a circus, the bottom was too soft, we tried to sit the excavator sideways to the pond on the slope, but the lower track would sink in and almost tip the excavator over, so we ended up tearing out my fence so we could point the tracks down the slope in several different areas, then we dug out two areas to about 10' deep at full pool, it will be much better than what I've had, but probably only increased the depth in about 1/8th of the pond... not a big improvement, but it's a lot better than what I had, at least now I have an area that is filling with water instead of drying out to parched mud... Guess my hope is if a drought ever hits this bad again, hopefully a few fish will survive in those two areas so I don't have to start over completely again next time.

Now my questions start for how long does the raw pond have to sit before it could support fathead minnows? I know the plant life won't really show up until next spring, but wondered if the bugs will get going fast enough that I could start some fatheads before winter sets in? I'd love to have them ready to go to spawning next spring when the temps get right... Hopefully my pond will recover to the point of runoff next spring... May not happen with the extreme lack of ground water we are currently in, but seems like the rains are returning, so I'm hoping things will swing back to a more normal moisture situation...

Water seeping into the pond is nice and clear so far, I was afraid it might be pretty muddy with all the recent machine work, but so far it's pretty clear... More rain on the way, so I'm hoping that will fill things to where the original bottom level is reached, that will make at least 5-6' of water in the deep spots.. Anyway I guess I'm crazy, but I'm looking forward to seeing what happens with this new life for the pond...

One last thing, I ended up finding a big 4' clay layer under my current pond floor, so we left some vertical edges at the outer edge of the hoes reach and tapered the nearside at around 1 to 2 slope, I know the muck will melt into the deep trench over time, but I'm in hopes I'll still have a bit of a ledge there with the clay so I have a deep area to help the fish have a place to go for cooler temps in the summer and a difference in terrain to give them a choice for something other than shallow mud bottom... Anyway it was a long busy day, but now I'm off to a new possibility anyway... Later J

Gehajake - I am 8 years in on this project and more money than I'd ever admit. I do love it for sure and hope to spend a big chunk of the year, every year, out there once my kids are out of school. The mild winter temps up there were one of the biggest surprises to me. I only saw negative temps up there one day last year and that was -5F. Before I got the weather station up there I had imagined -20F type winter temps, but it's just not the case. The ice DOES hang around a long time. It varies a good bit year to year, but I'd say the average is ice on by November 1st and ice off by first week of May. On the tough years I have had ice by mid October and ice not come off until mid June! I am hoping my warmer water temps this year lead to shorter ice duration. We will see....


Canyon - I ran the trash pump for about 1.5 hours on the grass blades. When I saw it wasn't working I shut that down. When I was leaving the grass blade bloom had subsided somewhat.

I do NOT have a huge number of fish. I actually have a very small number. I do not know an exact number. Mark Cornwell told me he had personally observed 80 Brook Trout using one 4' x 8' spawning box. I have a feeling the trout are spawning other places in my lake as well so the spawning box was just more of an insurance policy. Will be interesting to see if there's any evidence of use from this year.

j[psdad:

Never tested the water from the tiles. If there is a heavy rain at first it is a bit turbid but then it clears up. Heavy clay soils at the pond area. The pond has a 28' deep hole, and it is aerated. The pond owner isn't worried about the nutrients too much, the pond has been there for a LONG time, but it was completely drained and renovated over a 3 year period before it was restocked. If needed there will be a well in place next year to give the pond a good flushing. Pond has approximately 56 ac/ft water in it.

Yes the mild turnover could bring nutrients to the top where it feeds the phytoplankton that is in the sun, causing them to multiply.

Thanks- Will re-read the articles and watch PH carefully. PH 7.5 yesterday .
Thanks again.

Well said, Brian. I have a permit & wanted to stock maybe two-thirds at first to see how they do, then add the remainder if necessary. Under the 18 month rule I'd be forced to put them all in right away. I'll write them.

Great fish, even better picture!