Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Pond seining - a cautionary tale

I seined the pond last weekend. Pics are below. Here's the recap.

1) My objective was to learn the condition and quantity of fish. That objective was not fully met - we only netted a few of the fish.
2) Fallen branches, large field stones on the bottom, and steep/irregular shaped sides were obstacles to effective seining. We could not maintain an effective seal at the edges, nor at the bottom.
3) Interesting that the take varied by species. I put in 20 female LMBs last summer - and we netted 12. There's innumerable shiners - and we netted only one (also shown below), in adult phase of about six inches in length. We netted only two trout - the target species for my pond - and I feel certain there are on the order of 100+ in the pond. No turtles, either. And I know we have at least one snapper.

On the whole, it was a fun activity and we can probably learn to do it better. But the pond was not designed for seining - and that is the real take-away lesson.
Here's the seine laid flat, ready to be placed in pond. You can see the weighted bottom line, and floats at the top. The seine was ordered 12 feet high - although it doesn't look so in the pic, with a 12x12x12 pocket in the middle. (ATVs were not used, all pulling was done by hand)

I used a friend with scuba to help see & determine what was happening with the seine

Here the seine is being placed ready for pulling.

After the pull, our inexperience showed as the many folds of the seine net were tough to navigate. And we wanted to quickly count and release the fish. Below the mouth of a LMB is snagged in the line. Note the 3/4 inch mesh was meant to balance the ease of pulling against the likelihood of 'gill-netting' any of the target species of the pond - which we wanted to avoid.

Here's the adult shiner. I never knew they got this big - but these things are prolific in the pond.

Here's a group of LMB

A brown trout

For what it's worth I had some experienced seiners here who came to pick up perch for BPS'. When they noticed there was no "mudline" they announced immediately we would not do well. And we didn't. For some reason using a "mudline" keeps the net in contact with the bottom better.

Did you have any trout or bass jump over the net?

BTW removed my blocking net due to less than optimum performance. Today I had a brook trout up on the bank that may have be chased out by a bigger brown trout. Oh well...

Yeah,I regret not getting the mudline option. And no, I didn't see any fish jumping the net - but that's likely because there were just a few in the net. But also because of the pocket. That probably worked the best. The fish we did catch were caught in the pocket.