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Life has been really busy and we haven't been able to spend as much time as we would like fishing or managing the pond this year. We had a cool spring and extremely windy weather this spring that kept us inside when we did have a little time. The pond is still very cloudy (around 8" of visibility). I turned on the aerators in early May this year because the water temperatures were so cool up to that point and the water was already full of color so I don't think it is an issue related to this system. I have done a jar test and the water seems to clear up only slightly after several days of sitting. I have mixed in gypsum in a couple other jars in varying amounts and it hasn't seemed to help much if any at all. I'm thinking my issues are organic in nature and really want to come up with a plan soon. I know that the low visibility in the water has to negatively affecting my sight predators.
For the first time we caught what we are sure is a second generation YP this spring. I have attached a picture of the 5" little guy; to me there is no way this fish was an original. Our YP have just turned 3 years old and from what I understand when they get to 3-4" they are capable of spawning. If that is correct, we should have seen YP reproduction for the last two springs. I feel like there is a plenty of structure for them. We have had two 30' cedar trees and late this winter I added several tops of hedge trees. There is an area in my pond that is probably 60' x 30' that is full of brush from the bottom to the top. I would think that would provide a decent area for them to deposit their ribbons. Time will tell. Would my large GSH be raiding eggs and eating tiny YP fry?
We saw our first dead SMB. This is the only record we have of one of the original 100 dying. I've attached a picture. It turns out that his eyes were larger than his mouth as he chocked on a 4" RES. That's more proof that they don't go well with spiny backed fish.
I have also attached a few pictures of our spreadsheet with our data on it. We have a spreadsheet with all fish on it and then tabs for individual sheets for each species of fish. So far we have used about 140 tags. Of our original 100 SMB, we have tagged almost 90 of them! We have noticed a couple that we have caught who have lost their tags, but for the most part they seem to be staying in pretty well. Smallie #1279 has a propensity for eating artificial lures and has been caught four times since he has been tagged. I have color coded my spreadsheet tag number to keep track. Fish caught a second time are in blue, a third time in green, and a fourth time in orange.
I was late to have the conservation department come out and shock the pond this spring. Last fall we had a plan to have them come out early this spring to try and find a few WE. That just didn't happen. They were finally able to come out May 10th this year. We were in the middle of a four day stretch of 90+ degree weather and didn't have high hopes for finding a WE. We shocked for about 30 minutes and found lots of healthy GSH, SMB, RES, and YP. It was fun to see how many of them were already tagged. As we continued, we pulled up to one of the SMB beds in the northeast corner of the pond and in about 3' of water up rolled a WE! I was beyond ecstatic and so were the guys from the department. We quickly put her in the tank and continued on for a few more minutes. When we were finished we tossed all the other fish back and measured and tagged the WE. I knew she was a good fish when she boiled up but had no idea how good she actually was. Honestly, I expected a WE to be 14-16" or so at this point or even smaller since we have had no luck catching one. Check out the picture. This fish just turned 3 years old and was 21.5" and 3 lbs. 12 oz.!!!! I couldn't believe it. She was incredibly healthy and growing at a better rate than any other species in the pond. It certainly made my day and gave me reason to believe that the other WE in there were doing well too. I would have to think that this fish is in the top 10% of my WE that have survived, but it just makes us want to catch a couple even more just to see.
I have 30 lbs. of GSH headed to my pond in a few days to continue to supplement my forage base. I plan to add a few pounds to my forage pond and try to get them going well in there. Now if I can just fix my cloudy water, I would feel great about where my pond is headed.
