Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Property Projects & Construction What did you do at your pond today?

Purple Santa dropped off a bag of Optimal Bass formula yesterday.
The HSB that I stocked last fall are pellet hogs, so I thought it might be worthwhile to offer a larger pellet to them.
They took to it immediately, as did some of the larger BG and RES.

Got a toad-strangler rain overnight. Pond is full to overflowing again.

That toad strangler is headed this way, just in time for shocking a pond with the Herman Brothers today...... I am putting a change of clothes in the truck just in case the rain suit doesn't do it's job.

I went and laid on the dock this afternoon and marveled at the huge number of fry currently in the pond, I'm not sure if I've ever seen anything like it. Three and half weeks ago I had a huge daphnia hatch, daphnia everywhere within 18" of the edge of the pond, this was followed by huge golden shiner hatch. The GSH fry that hatched in early June are already pushing 1"+, a few are already 1-1/4", the early hatch GSH are intermixed with new GSH fry that have hatched in the last few days. The number of daphnia seen along the edge of the pond has been significantly reduced in the last two weeks.

Underneath the dock in the shade there were hundreds of freshly hatched RES fry that are noticeably lighter colored and deeper bodied that the GSH fry. I went and grabbed a fine mesh dip net and ran it next to the dock for 10-15 seconds and pulled up 30-40 RES fry that were 9-12mm in length, these were the smallest RES I've ever sampled. The large number of fry likely has to do with removing 375 large golden shiners in the last 10 months out of my 1/4 acre pond. Last August-September I removed 308 GSH, and then another 67 in late May/early June, that's roughly 1500/GSH per acre in mostly in the 6" to 6-1/2" size range. I should see some good growth rates on my RES and SMB, I can tell you that the fishing has become extremely tough in last couple of weeks.

I loved reading your updates on your GSH Eradication thread. It's crazy how many adult shiners you had in a quarter acre pond. I bet all your other fish feel like they can breathe again. That's an incredible amount of biomass you freed up for other fish to grow.

Steve, how is your new pond coming?

Gizzard Shad, Common Carp and some species of suckers. The turkey vultures gotta eat too!

I concur with your take on this Shorty. I guess it is too early since restocking to have harvested any RES but at some point harvest of RES could help to increase YOY production in years going forward.


At standard weights ... Shorty has removed around 115 lbs/acre. This is very meaningful and I definitely agree that YOY production has been boosted considerably by the action.

Photo from my back deck and from down inside the pit. It’s hard to judge on how big it’ll be, somewhere between a quarter and half acre. I’m hoping for closer to a half. The guy’s also gonna dig me a small sediment/bait pond to go with it. Probably another week or two and it’ll be done! Still working on burning that pile of stumps in the middle. They take forever…

Looking good! Glad to see it happening for you.

Looking good! You might want to consider pushing the excess stumps into a good area & depth for cover, rather than burning them. Depends on your goals, of course, but I wish I'd done more of that at my place!

esshup, did u drag a net, electroshock? Removed from what size pond? Personal pond or one of your customer ponds? Pond goals? Tell us more, like why now? water temps? If i understand it correctly, down here water temps are too high for seining because it would stress out the fish I want to keep in the pond?

I added a half bale of Alfalfa to the pond to see if it would get a bloom going. It worked the first time I ever added it to the pond water.

I had Nate Herman come over with his electroshock boat. It was the soonest he could make it with his busy schedule. Customers pond right next to a creek that overflowed into it in 2017 when the creek rose 15 feet. 3 acre pond, was a sand/gravel pit in the 70's. Steep sides, water only fluctuates about a foot if there is no flooding due to the sandy ground. Goals are to grow bigger panfish. The biggest BG we saw were males on beds and they were 5" long. Gizzard Shad, Suckers, Common Carp. Water temps are in the low to mid 70's. LMB were all 110-130 RW, biggest we shocked up was about 2.5#. Very few Crappie seen, both White/Black are in there. Shocked up 9 Pumpkinseeds too. Roughly 15 gallons of Gizzard Shad, all about 8"-9" long - bigger than the bass could eat except for 1 that we shocked up. Only one 6" common carp, so at least the bass are keeping their numbers down.

Goal for the e-shock was to see what's in the pond to get a plan to move forward. Push the reset button? Deal with what's there? Customer bought the place about 7 years ago and has done a LOT of projects around there, now it's time to focus on the pond. He built up a berm and put in a flash board riser system, so the creek wouldn't back up into the pond unless he had a LOT of rain. That 2017 flood was supposedly a 500 year rain event.

Well, the next morning (yesterday) he sent me a few pictures. Creek rose a BUNCH over night and flooded into the pond again. Pond rose 4' overnight..... So that makes writing the report and a plan for the future easier. He had about 5" of rain in the span of a few hours and the approx. 600 ac watershed that feeds the creek upstream from his place was too much for the berm. It doesn't help that upstream there is less and less farmground and more and more sub divisions going in, so that means more runoff into the creek.

Not a bad idea. Will it affect the water if the stumps are partially burnt?

Not sure, to be honest. Maybe it would be wise to have burnt parts covered in dirt, with unburnt wood exposed.

Today I was looking out the window while talking on the phone and had to cut the call short as I could see a great blue heron standing on my floating island trying to gulp down something way too big to swallow.

I ran the stinking bird off, hopped in my boat, paddled out to the island only to recover a dying 10.25" female BG. Man, was I mad. I didn't know any of my females had achieved that size. The thieving birds are welcome to snatch some smaller BG. Why would they kill and try to gag themselves on a fish so large that it would surely choke them to death! Perhaps a full choked wild turkey load directed at their head and neck region would save them from a slow, painful death of strangulation by over sized forage consumption.

4Corners, I've had a similar experience. Went down the dock & discovered a really large CNBG, 10 inches plus, that had been speared & regurgitated, left to die. I don't really mind herons taking a few smaller fish, but not this.

Probably about a month ago I found one of my LMB that I stocked last spring, up on the bank with a spear hole. It was a really nice fish, 12" > and fat. Kind of made me sick to see it go to waste.

Most of Misery has been monsooned over the last several days. 5.5" rainfall at my place Wednesday/Thursday last week, much more to the north and west of here.
Friday brought the coup de grace - 3.5" in 45 minutes.

The Missouri River at Jeff City went from 9' to 25' in 24 hours. It leveled off ~25.5', but it rained again most of last night and is still raining this morning. There was no time
to move machinery etc. out of the river and creek bottoms. Any flooding is bad. Flash flooding is worse.

I spent most of the weekend repairing the lane to my house. I knew the pond drain was going to cause problems after a heavy rainfall, and I'd gotten started working on it,
but I was too slow. The overflow got up onto the lane and cut it to base rock. Another spot above the pond is on a very slight incline, but long, ~400'. One track of that was
cut to the base rock for 200' or so. I was fortunate to have ~35 ton of inch-base crushed limestone on hand, so was able to make some good progress towards getting the
lane back in shape. I'll need another 50 ton or so to make it right.

6/25/21


6/27/21


There's a decent size willow tree down in the pond. It's rooted on neighbor guy's side of the fence on the back side of his pond dam. No way to get a machine in there to
drag it out without causing a lot of damage, so I'll have to tie it off on my side of the fence, cut it, then drag it out with the tractor. It will be awhile before it's dry enough to get
on the pond dam with a tractor.



The creek totally inundated my bait pond. It was 3' under by the time the rain stopped Friday evening. Went back there with a can of pellets yesterday evening and was
pleasantly surprised to find some of the BG/HBG stayed home during the flooding.

Sorry to hear about the flooding! How is your dam holding up so far?

No worries with the dam on either pond. Main pond spillway is on grade and gets away from the dam quickly.

Bait pond is a dugout, with just a low berm. It has developed a good turf since I built it.
Didn't take any damage. Creek was on it for about three hours.

Augie, sorry to hear you're getting to much rain. I wish you could send it my way, I could use it. I've been getting a little but nothing like you.

Thanks for the information esshup. I'm a bit nosey and was curious after seeing all those fish on the ground. Hay! With the description, you made then maybe it might drum up some more ponds to look over. That's assuming you want more to take care of

I made it out to the pond yesterday morning to ck on the aeration and ck the feeders. I did a little lmb fishing and was pleased with what I caught. Four different sizes all of them fat and healthy. Have not seen any of the recently added HSB but I am sure they are around. Way happier than last year's June/July disaster.

Great news, Tracy! Congrats!

My brother visited & we fished for about 90 minutes. He caught his personal best CNBG, BG, and LMB -- all on a fly. Relatively cool weather after rains this morning really helped, I was so happy for my bro to enjoy his time. He'll be back!

It's been a crazy week here Bobbss. It rained all of Sunday night and didn't quit until around lunchtime yesterday,
then it started back up around 6:00pm and rained all night last night.
From the looks of the radar screen there's more on the way.

I've been doing my no-rain rain dance but it isn't working.

On the bright side, my road repairs and pond drain expansion seem to be working. For now anyway.