Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Seining advice

Bought a seine for my 1/4 acre trout pond, and was wondering if any of you folks have some experience and/or advice.

The pond is oval-ish in dimensions, about 55' across by 90 feet long. Steep, stone-lined sides to a flat clay bottom. 9 feet deep.

The seine is 70 feet long, 12 feet high. Floats on the top, lead weights on the bottom. 1/2 inch mesh, and a 10x10x12 pocket in the middle - top to bottom of the seine.

Purpose of the seine is to see what the heck has happened to about 250 trout I've put in at various times over the last three years. I've caught around 40. There's been predation. Mink and cormorants were the worst. In a small pond like this, my observation is that the trout get hook-shy and smart, quick. But I've fed with good quality pellets, there was always reasonable surface feeding action, good aeration, and some of the trout taken were over 20 inches. So I have reason to hope!

Advice I'm looking for would be any of the following.

1) Speed vs care? I've got field stones stacked along the side, and with some bigger stones fallen on the bottom. Plus I left one edge to grow cattails (but edged top to bottom with stone covered weed barrier to prevent them taking over). So I won't be able to get a 'vacuum seal' during the seine. Can I just do a nice clean sweep, or do I need a wet-suit, mask, and fins to carefully seal all the gaps as I go...? This sounds problematic, so I'm wondering what you all think.

2) Minimizing stress on the fish? Assuming I get a fair quantity in the net, I assume I should quickly process (count them) and sort them, with minimal handling. But any advice would be appreciated.

3) Time of day, time of year? I've heard cooler weather is best, so with ice just off the pond I was gonna do it now. Before putting more in from the hatchery.

Other advice? Should I post photos?

NE,

Lots of questions before any answers.

What size and type of trout have you put in your pond? Rainbow should be pretty easy to catch. Browns would probably be pretty hard to catch.

Are you feeding? If you've put in 250 trout, and pulled out only 40, you should see a real serious feeding frenzy when you throw in just a handful of floating pellets if the water temperature is between about 40 to 65 degrees. That should give you a real good indication of the sizes and quantity of fish in the pond.

If you aren't feeding, what kind of forage or food do the trout have?

No offense, but I can't even imagine trying to pull a seine like you describe without a trawler. Hopefully somebody else can make some suggestions about it.

Let us know a little more.

Ken

What is the purpose of the seining. If just for evaluation then try putting out the seine in a half-circle facing the shore in a place where it will be easy to pull - feed in the middle of the deployed net. Once they get comfortable pull in the net slowly and see what you have. Look sort and remove or release as quick as possible. See below for the idea (you can do it that way also same concept)

I checked my orders, and it is 225 total instead of 250. Trout plantings were as follows.

2006: 75 rainbows in spring. 50 browns in fall.
2007: 75 rainbows and 25 brook in spring.

I supplement with silver cup trout feed, high protein. Their newer stuff that keeps the trout flesh rosy colored. But honestly there is not a huge amount of surface activity. During the spring and fall when water temps are between 45 and 60, I put in about a cup in the am and a cup in the pm. It takes about 15 minutes for them to clean it up.

But the pond has lots of invertebrates, crayfish, and huge numbers of shiners/minnows. And I aerate with two membrane diffusers and a 1/3 hp pump from Ted Lea.

I have two management worries right now. One is the ph is low. I'm measuring between 6 and 6.5. And predation, as mentioned before.

As for the seine pulling, I could be way off base. The weight of the seine dry is not much. I can lift it easily. So I thought four people could do it. Two pulling - one on each side. And two in the water guiding.

Eric, the diagram makes sense. I'll adapt to my pond and 70 foot net.

Ken, forgot to mention the size. They were 6 to 8 inches at time of planting.

Condello has experience with a seine almost that big. IIRC he has Shorty do all the heavy work.

Sienes aren't hard to pull if your not hitting rocks and logs or lots of algae. Mine is 100 X 8 and it works well.

NE
Im not sure you have a ph problem, my pond is always between 5.5 and 6.0 ph, and the BT & RT which were stocked last year survived fine. The RT went from 9 to 17 1/2" in 5 months, and BT to 14".

AP, that is good to hear. I've also had pretty good growth.

Are you clear of ice yet, in NY? I turned my earators on, and it quickly cleared off about 15 inches of remaining ice - just this week. But with the water temps so low, there's been no observable activity when I throw a few pellets out.

NE,
I probably still have plenty of ice, my pond, and cabin are 90 miles nw of my home. I was there 9 days ago, it still had 14 inches of ice, and there was 37" of snow on the ground. I dont have an aerator, but i do have 2 pipes running 250ft above a waterfall.
I keep one blown out so it doesn't freeze, and i run it every couple of weeks during the winter.
I'm goin up there today to start the pipe running. the pond is down about 9", and this should bring it up quickly with all the snow melting.
I hope your trout made it thru the winter. Did you ever think of getting an underwater camera? Walmart has one with 50ft of cable,and a 5" monitor, it's only $100.oo. Sportsmans guide has one for about $120. It could be useful, and alot of fun.

NE Mason,

That is a lot of trout for a pond that size if they are all adults. But as you say you did catch 40 and you have some predation. As I said in an article coming up in Pond Boss I try and stay within the guideline of 12 pounds of final trout weight per gpm flow. I typically harvest about 500 lbs of trout in a pond identical in size to yours. Raceways can produce up to 50 lbs of trout per gpm flow but we are not talking raceways here.

Having trout for some time now on and off I can pretty much predict what size they get to and be pretty close on what the final weight will be by the actual count. And I figure in about a 5 percent mortality. But I don't have any real problems with predators.

Does you seine have a mudline? If not it will not work as well. Addtionally look for some of the trout to jump over the net when they get crowded.

I will be doing the same shortly although I am going for complete removal and transfer to another pond. I have to move about 100 brooks and about 70 browns from my pond to another that will have a blocking net installed to separate the species. I will catch as many as I can by angling first and them use the net. When I hook them I quickly net them with a soft mesh landing net attached to 12 foot extendable pole and walk them quickly to the other pond which is only a few feet away.

If experience tells me anything I will miss about 20 percent when I seine (my net does not have a mudline), and will have to dip them out of puddles when the pond gets drained down.

The reason I bring up the mudline thing is I had two experienced seiners seine my holding pond for big yellow perch last spring. They came to pick them up for Bass Pro Shops. The first thing one of them said was without the mudline it was going to be tough. Sure enough we had a hard time seining the fish. I ended up draining the pond to get the remaining fish out. There were largemouths in the pond and they jumped over the net when crowded.

Cecil, I don't even know what a mudline is. I'll poke around on the internet and see.

My goal in seining may be to harvest a few. I'm teaching the fishing merit badge to some local boy scouts, and I want them to learn to clean trout quickly and easily as part of it. But mostly the goal is to do a biomass count and health check. My hatchery supplier said I should expect to miss 1/3 of the fish. So I'll just count and then figure that half that many are still in the pond, to give me a ballpark idea.

As for the total biomass and load on the pond, I'm very anxious to find out what quantities remain. The ice was probably 25 inches, with as much as 20 inches of snow on top from time to time. So all the talk about winterkill from others has me worried. I haven't seen any floaters.

But I'm very curious. I've really enjoyed building the pond, raising & feeding the fish... And I'm looking forward to seining as well. I'll post some pics.

NEMason,

I look forward to your pics and hope to share mine too. I'm in the process of building the blocking net right now and hope to share pics on it too!


Funny you said you didn't know what a mudline was. Neither did the supplier of the net even though they have them listed in their catalog! I had the net made for me by Memphis Net and Twine and paid for by the good Folks at Bass Pro Shops. Bill Cody insisted I make sure they installed a mudline. I told the contact at BPS to make sure they installed one, and when she talked to them they claimed they didn't know what she was talking about! But it's in their catalog!