Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Grow Out / Forage Pond Plan

I have a plan for a grow out/forage pond and I was hoping for some advice from the experts. My lake is 20 acres in North Mississippi, built in the 1960s, stocked with LMB, BG, BC, and Threadfin Shad. The lake is deep (over 20 ft) and spring fed. It was built with an unusual feature at the emergency spillway area. To one side of the dam, there is a cut about 6 ft wide and 3 ft deep to an approx 1/4 acre pond and the emergency spillway is at the end of the pond. This pond is about 5 to 6 ft deep.

Now my plan is to put up a blocking net across the cut and stock FH minnows, fingerling CNBG, maybe some RES, and 15-20 adult CNBG from another lake to spawn in the pond. I will install a feeder on a small platform that I built. My hope would be for three different year classes of CNBG by the end of the summer to release into my lake.

Now for my questions. First of all, does this seem like it would work? The current surface temperature in the lake is about 42 degrees, so I was thinking that most of the fish would be out of the pond and in the deeper water of the lake. I thought I could just put up the blocking net, but do you think I need to try to chase any fish out of the pond first? Lastly, there are cattle that graze on my land and use my lake from time to time including using the pond. Do you think it would be necessary to fence off the pond to keep the cattle out?

If this project is successful and my shad survive the winter, I might try growing out some HSB next year.

Any suggestions and comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Bill

Bill If you can keep your cattle out of your pond your shoreline will stay looking much better. You can buy a solar powered water pump and pump water out of your pond into a cattle trough to keep the cows off of your shoreline. Electric fence can be used to block acess to your pond and is pretty cheap. If you don't have electricty to keep the fence charged you can buy a charger with a solar panel. I have cows on my place and this year I want to try doing rotational grazing. Tractor supply would have everything you would need. I think that what you are doing with the blocking net will work but I can almost garauntee you have some bass in that small pond that you may want to chase out when you put up you net. If you decide to stock hsb in a pond that large you will need to stock quite a few in order to catch any when you go fishing but they are really a lot of fun to catch.

Here is a thread on the same idea. The POND BOSS ARTICLES CONTENTS 2007 JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2007 :

10. A HATCHERY POND INSIDE A POND – BLOCKING NETS. Eric West describes blocking nets, their benefits and how he used them to increase the size of fingerling bass to improve survival after release and raising forage.


The beginning:

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=5690&Number=52295#Post52295

The PB article covers the topic - call the PB office and get a copy. One tidbit - use the blocking net to force the fish out of the small area by seining in reverse from the far shore to the blocking point (inlet) - then secure the net in place and add fish behind the net.

Thanks for the responses. James, a quick question. Do you think that keeping the cattle out is important to the success of my plan? The cattle have about 600-700 acres to graze and multiple ponds available to them. The concern I had was if they would adversely affect the water quality or ruin any spawning efforts of the larger CNBG. I don't have any electricity at the lake, so I had thought about fencing the pond off with barbed wire. One thing to keep in mind is that there will be some exchange of water since the lake is connected to the pond by the cut. I also had a thought that I could run some sort of small water pump when I am there to pump fresh water from the lake into to the pond.

Having seen what cattle can do to (and in) a small steam and it's banks, there is no way I would let mine into the fields with my ponds. I have 1" black plastic water lines buried from each pond to a spot below the dams, so I can gravity feed a trough at either pond site for the cows to drink at.