Folks,
Comments welcomed. I have a 1/4 acre pond at normal level @ 13' deep, which is now down to 1/8 acre @ 7' deep, here in north Texas due to lack of rain. I have ~100 catfish (10-15" long - very active) , ~50 bullhead (same), 100 HBG (~8-10", - very active), 25 LMB (6-8" - rarely seen) in it. I hand feed at sundown and they feed like piranhas. I run aeration for 6 hours in the middle the night. Just this week I saw my first floating HBG....all other activity appears normal.

During this anticipated extended low water time period, should I decrease the amount of food I'm pitching? Should I increase the time of aeration?

Thanks as always,

Danbob
PB Member

I'd like to see what others suggest, but I agree with your idea to cut back the amount of feed.

I have no aeration experience, but that is one method to help clear the water of bad gasses.

I also wonder if maybe adding a few boxes of kosher salt might help to reduce stress on the fish.

No expert here with managing a fishery like this, but wouldn't now be a good time to harvest a few fish out of the smaller volume of water while cutting back on feed? I would fear that there is too much load in this smaller volume of water, and water quality will be very difficult to maintain. Harvesting a few fish will help alleviate the strain in the system. You can then decide again later if you need to remove more if the water volume continues to go down.

Sorry we stole all your rain in WNY, it has been a crazy wet year with Texas-style downpours and gully-washers. Honestly at this point, you can have it back.

Thanks for the comments guys. I'll research the salt idea and I'm glad I'm getting some support for cutting back on the feed. It's just now starting to back off on the upper temps, two weeks ago mid 90s were common and now we're going into a mid-upper 80's period. Typically you don't want to fish when it's this hot because it stresses the fish that you might catch, but not want to harvest. But with the temps dropping, that's exactly my plans. Especially targeting getting the uninvited bullheads out of there.

Yeah, removal of all bullheads would be a great thing from many angles.