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

Any plant that grows where it's unwanted can be considered a weed.

Likewise, any fish that swims, can be considered a nuisance or trash fish if it's in the wrong place, or if the
numbers are wrong even though it might be in the right place.

Any number of BG in my cow pond are a nuisance. Any number of BG in my bait pond are bait.

3-5lb LMB are what I call a succotash fish. Filet it out, then cut it into chunks like you would a big ol catfish.
Fry up some taters and onions, add a can or two of stewed tomatoes, throw in some sweet corn and butter beans,
then toss in those ditch pickle chunks. Season it up with a big handful of Tony's or SlapYoMama, simmer until the
fish is cooked, and then chow down.

You'll thank me if you try it.

I had a half hour to burn this afternoon, so I went fishing. 3 consecutive casts caught 3 different species of fish. I kept 3 Yellow Perch for Friday night dinner. I think the perch may have spawned already, the males were pretty skinny but still tipped the scales at a pound each. Not a female YP caught. I caught 5-6 trout, 5-6 YP and 2 SMB. All on a 3/16 oz pink jig head with a 2 1/2" white curly tail grub. Tossed out and slowly reeled it back in. Water visibility is about 7-8 feet, I could see the Trout down near the bottom at the end of the pier. The deck boards on the pier are 1x6's.





Bad angle on the SMB, it's not as skinny as it looks in the picture. Snipe, from the picture, any guesses as to what type of SMB it is?

That is some pretty productive fishing for a half hour! That is the kind of fishing I like. Nice.

It was, and all the fish came from the same spot. I think the wind was pushing the warmer surface water to that corner of the pond. Woke up today to 4"-5" snow, with a few more inches forecast for tonight. Temps tonight and tomorrow night are supposed to be in the mid teens, today and tomorrow highs in the mid 20's. 45°F for Sunday with sun.

Hello.

Is it easier to fillet bass than Yellow-perch.
A+

It is a "Lucky SMB", since only YP were selected for Friday night dinner!


I read lots of information on Pond Boss about how to sample a pond's fish population, since as a noob, I know I will initially be bad at that task.

Three different species on your first three casts is very impressive. Was that three casts with the same lure into roughly the same area, or were you changing your angling to determine which species were becoming active in your pond?

In my opinion, perch of similar size are easier to fillet. Of course, you may need to fillet more perch if they aren't large!

I use an electric knife for LMB. It won't easily go through the backbone, but will go easily through the ribs. Don't fillet all of the way to the tail, but flip the fish and use the electric knife to separate the fillet from the skin.

Then use a small, sharp knife to cut out the small section of the fillet containing the ribs.

I have used the same method for YP in Canada, but it has been so long since I was fishing up there I don't remember how the YP compared to my usual LMB cleaning (or to the SMB I was simultaneously cleaning with the YP in Canada).

3 casts, same lure, same place.

Esshup, DH Northern. Next time you get a chance, get a pic with mouth shut as it would be for a critical length measurement. We can verify the DH by the jaw bone.
p.s. I like the tail on that pic and if I'm counting correctly, looks like 14 soft rays..

azteca, filleting Bass is darn near illegal.. :-))

Will do. I'll fish a bit more next week. We had 5" snow last night, temps tonight and tomorrow night are supposed to be in the low teens and tomorrow it will only hit 22°F. Supposed to warm up for a bit next week.

Best LMB I've ever had was prepared Hong Kong style. Scale, Clean & gut whole fish, stuff with lemongrass & garlic & ginger, steam for ten minutes or so. (Some lemon zest can sub for lemongrass if you like.) Delicious with soy sauce, garlic, ginger, bit of hot sauce & sesame oil dip.

Of course, this refers to 1 to 2 lb LMB from clean, cool water. Filleting is easier, but whole fish is so much better.

Today it is 18F, so I'm doing some tractor work to improve yard drainage while the ground is stiff! Next week it'll be mud again.

I was planning some tractor work, but with an open station and the wind, I reconsidered. We are up to 17 F here.

Danged if the battery wasn't dead and the hood latch frozen shut! This Bobcat (Kioti) runs melted snow from the hood directly onto the hood latch, so it freezes shut easily. I just finished changing out the torpedo heater for the battery charger, so maybe I'll get the implement connected before dark.

Finally had a few minutes to wet a line in the cow pond.

Spent maybe 15 minutes tossing a Carolina-rigged 2" white curl tail grub.

One HSB ~16" that had me wishing I'd picked up a rod that was spooled with braid rather than one that was spooled with mono.

One SMB ~14".

Both fish looked great. The SMB was shaped like a football. The HSB was shaped like a fat football.

Now I just need to find the YP.

Tossed out a handful of Optimal BG. Lots of takers.

Augie, that's a good first day of the year!

I have a total of 16 boxes up on my ponds and potholes... Nice watching a couple pair check out the digs I just cleaned up 8 days ago prior to the thaw.

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Very very nice place for a duckhut! You are so lucky that you have a mounting tree right in the water! This looks great and I was hoping to drill through ice to mount a new stake in the pond and install my duck hut but ice is kind of sketchy already to stand on. I'll have to wait till ice out and find a boat or endure cold waters!

The earliest I have seen a Wood duck around the pond was about the first week of April but maybe they have been doing some fly-bying already.

Thanks for the video!

Tossed a pint or so of Optimal BG in the bait pond this evening. Good numbers of smaller-ish BG/HBG came up to feed.
Didn't notice any with the fin fungus that I saw on the one the other weekend. Also didn't see any that appeared to be in
the 6"-8" size range. I expect that most of those bigger ones croaked while the pond was iced over for 8 weeks.

The fish in the cow pond appear to have done very well over the winter. A quart of Optimal around dusk had the water
boiling with feeding fish and was gone in short order.

I still have a 26 ton heap of 4x6 rock that needs to be tossed into the pond. I'd hoped to be finished with that by now but
it was just too stinking cold in February for me to have any interest in throwing rocks. The ground is completely thawed
now and is way to soft to even think about driving the tractor anywhere that needs to be mowed. So I'll have to wait until
things dry out a bit before I can put out what I hope will be the last load of rip-rap.

Lots of wood ducks and a pair of geese on the pond. No cormorants!

Fish were eating so well I had to increase feed times, though in view of the birds I added mostly in the middle of the night. Visibility around 30 inches, a little clear but I'm gonna add pond fertilizer very soon. Algae dominating, no sign of bushy pondweed yet, I know it will be there eventually.

Lots of small fish, from fry up to a few inches. Survival rates can't be good with so little protective habitat.

Sudden warm up to around 60 degrees! Wow that feels good after a bitter cold weekend. I have clear edges on the pond and a big mass of floating ice about 4-5" thick. I chopped a path out until the water would go over my knee boots. As I chopped I was amazed to find brilliant green under the ice. Mats of FA in the shallows. How does it survive over the winter under ice so well? Maybe just enough light coming through?

I was hoping to install my duck box pipe while standing on the ice but didn't get to it in time and now I have to wade. I want to move the box to the opposite shore so that the opening faces West. Right behind the new location on shore is a couple of spruce trees so it should give a feeling of protection hopefully. I pounded an old trampoline netting galvanized 1" pipe I had in the basement till it was sunk with the top flush with the water line. (about 24" off bottom) My pond is about 2 feet low right now so this way if I keep the pipe in we won't hit it while ice skating and as the end of skating comes and the water levels drop hopefully I can find the pipe again.

I slid the 2" PVC pipe that holds the DuckHut on it over the pipe and then hung on it and twisted it a few more times to try to get it to embed in the bottom so it doesn't rotate too much on the metal pipe. The goal would be to reuse the mounting pipe if I can mark it with paint in the future or find a way to find it as the ice melts in future springs

Last year I had pounded it on a wolmanized 2x2 wood post which was such a tight fit that I couldn't get the PVC pipe back off the wood. Probably the wood swelled with the water too making it expand. I had to rock the PVC till I busted the wolmanized. I ended up drilling out as much of the left over wood as I could from the bottom side of the PVC pipe and then pounded what was left back up inside the pole so it was out of the way.

We will have a cool down and around freezing at night (Glad for that as we are not doing well with maple syrup this season yet, another post for another time) so the floating ice will probably stick around for a bit yet.

Hoping to have an interested Wood duck pair stop by this year!!

Dug test holes for pond locations at the farm yesterday. We have been very dry since October, so I was also able to test the variability of my ground water.

Success! Found good clay in 9 out of 10 holes. Several holes had pure blue clay at the bottom. I think I could make a pond that holds water like a bathtub with that stuff!

My subsoils were dry down to 6-8', and then I struck water. It would start seeping into the hole at depth. I struck clay within the next 6" every time there was water. It appears that my clay layers are continuous and there is still a little bit of groundwater migrating in the last bit of permeable sediment just above the clay seal.

I was worried that I would be forced to move lots of saturated sandy loam soils on top of wet clay to excavate my ponds. I now think I can accomplish our pond builds WITHOUT great difficulty, if I can get working during a semi-drought period.

The first step is to clear about 5 acres of land.

Does anybody happen to know if the goat in Al's thumbnail pic is available for contract work this spring?

Congrats, Rod! Sounds like you've hit the jackpot with clay, the lack of which has destroyed many a pondmeister's dreams.