Good idea or bad?

I didn't want to hi-jack a recent thread, but it gave me an idea. To start a new thread that would compile information about what everybody harvests from their pond. This might be a good place for those that are interested in having a pond for a food source to see what is going on in real-life scenarios. Yes, there is the pounds per acre formula, but instead we often relate to amounts per year in different ways. I would assume that most don't even keep track of pounds for a meal, just that a meal is meal. Obviously there are many variables to this, but I am thinking along basic info. like:

1) Size of pond/lake?
2) What fish do you eat from the pond? ---This does not have to include all the species present, just the ones you harvest for food.
3 The Amount? ---Just a aprox. number of some sort. For example: 5 meals a year for a family of three. -OR- One fish fry a year for the family re-union of 40 people -OR- one meal a week for a family of two. etc, etc, etc.......

Just keep it simple for overview purposes. Myself, along with hundreds of newbies out there would be curiuos and thankfull for it.

I'd say something like .02 meals per year.
Who wants to clean fish after a hard day fishing?
And actually the fish are kind of my pets. Did you ever see the episode of The Simpsons where Homer buys a small lobster, becomes attached to it while raising it and then cries while eating it? That kind of sums it up for me.

OK, 13-15 surface acres when full, 7-8 during a rough weather year.
LMB only.
Every 3rd Friday for 6 fireman, most of the year. Adding the stripers and whites I catch on big water, we eat fish at least once a month.

Also, 6 fireman = 9 normal people. We like to eat.

From my pond, enough for one person (I don't know if Kate, my Springer Spaniel would like fish for dinner). I have no problem with one meal per week, and recently I had a bunch of friends over. We pulled out enough fish to feed 20 people.

I normally take out LMB because I have to stay on top of the population or it'd overgrow the food chain. For the 20 people, it was LMB, BG and some YP.

I love to eat on the bone BG. My pond is 1.4 acres and im managing for big BG. I harvest 4 to 5 inch BG for frying whole. I can eat about a dozen in one sitting, but I dont want to remove larger gills that might make it to trophy size. I also harvest bass over 15 inches. Here are some pics of em in the pan.

pond 1 is 8 acres, pond 2 is 1.3 acres...I'd guess we average a meal a week during most of the year, feeding 5-7 people.

What do we eat? Whatever we catch. Not really - I'm trying to manage for trophy LMB so any bass over 16 or so goes back in. Slot limit on 12-15 bass come out, sometimes, as well as all the crappie we catch and some of the BG.

Last week we took out 17 crappie, 2 BG and no bass.

We clean and eat a lot of fish during the ice free months (april - Nov.). BG, BCP, YP. Two ponds 1 ac and 1/4 acre.

Clean all fish with the exception of 10" BCP or bigger which are released. We average 2 -3 fish meals every month. Family of 4 to groups of 10. My target is 400-500 fish cleaned per season.

Opener of MN 2012 fishing season with 8 guys

^ Wow. Thats a lot of fish. I wonder if my pond could handle that kind of harvest?

So did you clean all of these fish, if so do you filet them or cook them whole. If you do not mind cleaning these samller fish I think they taste better anyway.

My grandmother, who died when she way 98 years young, had me keep every panfish that I caught that was 5" or larger. She'd scale, de-head and gut them. Roll them in seasoned flour and pan fry them. If she found out that I tossed back 5"-6" BG I'd hear about it!!! She'd use a grapefruit spoon (the kind with the serrated tip) to scale the fish.

My family and friends with fish are like the Forest Gump movie and shrimp...pan fryed fish, pan fried skin on fish, grilled skin on fish, grilled fillet fish, tin foil wrapped fish, smoked fish, fish in red sauce, pickled fish, canned fish, dried fish....on and on.

Well this is my 3 in a half year mark and I have not kept any fish for eating just yet. I believe I will start this next spring though. My BG and CNBG are start to get decent size enough now to keep and eat. My LMB are just now hitting 100 percent RW so I am starting to look good there too. Should be fun this next spring for sure. If my pond don't dry up and float away!!

Not sure about my HSB as I have not caught any since July???

Excellent question ...

Yet, this is a very difficult question to answer. Our pond, and the ponds of many friends, are the centers of many community get-togethers. All include a lot of harvesting and good eating from non-commercial sources.

I was with several friends at breakfast this morning as we were joking about one of the latest "Preppers" shows. We were all laughing, scratching, and telling lies as we decided we must all be preppers, even though we don't really subscribe to their views. We just enjoy life as it has been for us, for many generations.

We grow big gardens. We preserve what we harvest. We shoot and harvest wild animals, meaning, that we hunt, and we have guns, but we aren't 2nd Amendment activists -- actually we like to "bare arms" during the summer gardening season, and we find it rather humorous to arm bears!.

We grow warm blooded animals like cattle, hogs, rabbits, and poultry. We grow the warm blooded animals for what they give us, like eggs and milk, plus meat. We grow cold blooded critters like the fish in our ponds. In our family and neighborhood group, we all have specialties. To us, a neighborhood covers at least a 25 mile radius -- maybe more.

Around the edges of my ponds, I grow horse radish, lettuce, spinach, onions, and cress. Just above the pond, in the wetland areas, I grow WV ramps, berries, and much more. In these areas I grow many of the gourd family, like cucumbers, squash, and pumpkins.

I guess we grow kids and grand kids at the edge of the pond too. They camp in tents at the pond. They learn to make s'mores and just enjoy a campfire, while they wait for a big old catfish to grab their line in the dark. In the morning, they are in the canoes and kayaks, making parents and grandparents nervous before we can start cooking pancakes and eggs.

My friends and I regularly renovate or replant fields around our ponds for the major critters, like deer and turkey. We carefully manage their numbers every season, which we can do with reasonable confidence, because friends and relatives own hundreds of acres around us.

Although my wife and I are "come heres" to where we now live, we are one of many local families who have multiple multi-family gatherings each year. A typical neighborhood gathering, whether just a party, a wedding reception, a baptism, or a funeral wake, they always include at least 30-40 people. Sometimes more. Nobody ever goes home hungry. We always have lots of fish and lots of good times.

Our 3/4 acre pond probably provides about 250-350 lbs., of fish per year. Mostly bluegill and catfish, with some LMB. I have no idea of how much venison the pond area produces, but, it too, is in the many hundreds of pounds per year.

Vegetables -- ?? Enjoyment for swimming, fishing, canoeing -- ??

It always involves at least three generations, and frequently four, of family and friends. In November and December, it includes a lot of butchering and a lot of good eating and fun. It is family inclusive, from infants too young to know how young they are, to those too old to remember how old they are.

As the weather gets too cold to gather outside, we congregate in neighborhood barns or big basements for country dancing, eating, and just plain family fun.

At least where I live, our ponds produce far more than what can ever be measured. It can't be measured in pounds, inches, whatever ...

Regards,
Ken

^ Wow, catmandoo. Thats a very thoughtfull post above. I didn't want to make this topic to be to time consuming for people to add their thoughts, but you sure did cover alot of areas that are dear to most people that have ponds. Thank you. And yes, it is a hard one to reply to because of the variables. That is why I tried to give a basic set of questions above. But more info is always appreciated.

I hope the replies keep coming. It is good to see the different ways people relate to what a meal is. If you compare the weight of steak to fish, fish takes up alot more volume than a steak so it may not take as much pounds of fish to make a meal as most might think. At least if we are sight orientated to our hunger.

Cat -Thats not a post to a question....that was a poem!

AWESOME!

For our family of four, we probably eat fresh fish 2-3 times a month. I find the lack of time to be the biggest hindrance to consuming more, as I am not able to fish as much as I would like. We eat more during the winter, as I am a devotee of cold water fishing, and have more free time.

Up to now BG have constituted the majority of our dinners, but the CC need to take on a more active role in this regard.

Cat I hope to have what you got someday.. That's a beautiful picture in my mind..

Cat, u da man! We too live off the land and have friends and family over literally all the time. I have a stinkin awesome big fryer and we cook for over 1500 people up at the lake every year. We harvest bout 200 hsb and 200 cc every year from our lake for eating fresh. We also eat fish caught from deep sea fishing trips too!

I just observe the nature in and around my pond, but eating vegan I occasional cut off the bottom stem of cattails, peel it down to the inner white portion and add that to salads. My experiment with the foam island showed me that not only flowers but also spinach mustered and probably many other vegetables can most likely be grown. You see at the ends of the island the spinach mustard is still going strong even though the flowers are done. No weeding or watering, just plant and forget.

Even when the flowers were beautiful you can see the spinach mustered was doing well.

Just a reminder to everyone to try and include the basic answers that is important for harvesting expectations. Say if there is 100 fish taken per year/month, it does matter what size the pond is too, etc. Newbie and future pond owners will then relate to this easily to the size pond they may/might have and what they may get.

Mike Almond--- How often do you have your meals?

Sprkplug ---- What size is your pond(s)?

n8ly ---- What size is your pond(s)? - or in your case, should I say lake.

We have 5 ponds, ranging from 1/2 acre up to 3.5 acres. As such, we could harvest much more, if time would permit.

Hank Williams Jr. would be proud. We're them old boys raised on shotgun. Homemade wine anyone?

Updating the thread, as now I can add my own fish harvest from the summer.

Pond is 1 acre
Stocked 50 RBT fall of 2012
Harvested 29 fish yielding 59.5 lbs

Also have LMB and BG in pond but to new to start harvesting any.

I heard you can harvest more than food at your pond in Colorado as of January 1.

Fish-n-chips, I am not familiar with how much production trout should yield, but that sounds pretty good to me. Were you satisfied with the results? Going to stock trout again?

On another thought, I know a lot of guys on here are also big time fishermen. But as far as harvesting fish for table fare from a private pond, I guess there would be numerous other options. When the time comes, I may experiment some with alternative methods, in case I don't catch the fishing bug bad enough.

What I have caught so far to put in my other pond and just to check some sizes of growth, it was pretty fun. But all I had to do was put a worm or a piece of table corn on a small hook and before it hit the bottom, there was a BG on.

I may be one of those that likes catching fish, but when they are not biting not having the patience to wait them out. So I think with me, it will depend on the fishes desire to be on a hook. If they got the desire, I'll probably harvest that way. If they are a little choosy, alternative methods may be exercised.

We harvest a fair amount of BG/HBG, CC, and LMB in the summer and early autumn. We stock golden and rainbow trout in our CC/HBG put-and-take pond each October. We harvest them in April and May.

We grow water cress and horse radish in the wetland I created to filter water going into my main pond. The water cress is in the area that flows. The horse radish is in an area a little higher, that stays wet nearly all year long. I hope to get some floating islands made this year for a few other veggies.

Then there is my 50' x 100' garden. It isn't actually part of the pond, but I keep a 2-inch semi-trash pump at the edge of my main pond during gardening season. About 200-feet of hose feeds up to four large sprinklers in my garden from this pump. If we go for a week or so without rain, I run the sprinklers for an hour or so.

We rarely if ever harvested fish from our pond,before PondBoss we threw everything back in hopes they would grow bigger.Our main goal has always been to have a nice fishing hole for friends and family.I now know thanks to PB that we can enjoy harvesting fish from our pond and have a better chance at a trophy all at the same time.Lately I just haven't had time for the pond but that is about to change.My wife and I come spring should be settled in our new place and finally putting down some roots.This will hopefully allow me more time to manage and fish our pond.Now I know I am a little off topic but with the help of PB we hope to get roughly a meal for 3-4 a week during the warmer months to keep the wife happy. With roughly 8 acres of water I don't think we'll have any trouble reaching our goal.

.....ooops!

One of the most well worded most elegant post I have read in a long time. I am sorry I do not have data to add to this thread but I had to comment on how well worded Ken's post was and hope to have every bit of an oasis as you have described.

I hope to harvest perch in the not so distance future from our pond.

Cheers Don.

Sorry I missed this Snrub.

Yes, I stocked trout again in the fall. Just about ready to start pulling them. I was very satisfied with the results. I think this year I will smoke a bigger percentage of the catch than last time.

Well I guess I can finally answer this question.

My pond is 1 acre. And I kept 7 CNBG this year between 7 to 8.5 inches to eat. I don't want to keep to many as I have a few LMB to feed and some HSB so I want to make sure those bigger BG are spawning but they are in the freezer as of last week and going to eat them soon. I have never ate BG before so looking forward to it.


RC

Right now we are in LMB harvesting mode and our goal is 40# for the year. They do taste good filleted and batter-fried.

Our pond is approximately 5 acres. This year I decided to get after the fishing as I'm spending a lot more time there on the weekends. So far this year we've kept about 100lbs of fish with about an 85/15 split between LMB and Crappie. We've caught some nice bluegill, but I rarely keep any of them. I've pretty well kept most any bass we've caught between 10"-15" and just about every crappie. Any fat healthy bass over about 15" typically gets turned loose. With the weather heating up both the bite and the time I spend fishing is about to slow tremendously. Nothing I like better than grabbing a rod, hitting the shoreline and in an hour be eating a fresh healthy dinner.

You've never eaten BG before? I'm not sure I understand what you're saying....can those words be used together in a sentence?

I allow a neighbor to harvest up to 60 BG from our 1 acre pond based on recommendations from this site.

Update from my earlier post when the pond was newer. I like fishing better than I thought I would. And the pond is producing well.

Pond is three years old now, and we harvested probably 30 to 40 CC 2-3# each ourselves. And probably about that many more by others. We ate some of it, gave a way a bunch, froze a bunch for later. Had a fish fry for employees.

Have cleaned about 50-60 BG, ate a few, froze a bunch and gave MIL a bunch.

I think we could harvest another couple hundred BG without putting a dent in the population. Our LMB are not keeping up with their end of the deal.

3 acre pond. We eat fish on average once a week, but definitely need to up our game to keep up with what the pond is producing.

For outright pounds of meat production, CC are hard to beat. I've not been much of a CC eating fan in the past, but our fish food fed CC are just as good as our BG, in my opinion. I have no problem eating them regularly.

Edit: Link to another thread concerning harvesting fish
What to harvest and when

Seems like a pretty easy question. You go into this whole pondmeister role with expectations that you will form a management strategy, including a harvest plan, meat on the table and then.....

Your harvest plan dictates that you harvest all LMB 15 inches or bigger and then.....you catch a nice plump 16 incher and you think to yourself, Hmmmm, this fish sure would be fun to catch when it gets bigger and before you know it....it's back in the pond!

Tell the truth now...most of you guys have done the same thing!