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

Fished the pond with a buddy's 13 yr old. I caught HBG, YP from 6" to 14" and RBT. Kept 2 of the RBT for the table.

Had to look up RBT. I may have to look around and see if I can find a few. How many do you stock in a 1 ac pond? What are possible side effects? Decreased numbers of GSH, and smaller YP would be my guess.
Will the RBT hit top water in the winter? When do they have to be harvested, in order to avoid them dying from warmer waters?
What length RBT did you stock, to already have fish large enough to harvest? Or do RBT survive year round in your BOW?

I know anthropic has done RBT in EAST TEXAS!

I can't remember if he posted a thread on that?

I know I have read many posts from members that do have trout in their ponds.

I just checked the archives, there are tons of articles on trout. (Just use "trout" as your keyword, and select the button for "Search Title Only")

Here is one example of a good discussion.

Trout in Warmer Ponds - Pond Boss

My (fuzzy) recollection is that trout do perform well in ponds if you optimize the stocking timing and your conditions. However, they are a somewhat pricey treat due to several factors that occur in warmer water ponds.

It all depends on the customer and their goals as to how many are stocked. I will put between 50 and 100 pounds per acre in my pond, I stock a city park pond with 250#/acre but they get fished out pretty quickly. Minimum delivery is 50# or it just isn't worth the time and expense driving to a pond to stock them. They are more fragile than other fish, so more care has to go into hauling them than other fish which equals to more overhead.

Stocking starts when water temp is in the low 60°F range and the trout will live until the water temp warms up to 70°F the following Spring. Only one customers pond had the trout survive over the summer but his pond is exceptionally deep and we did some playing with the aeration system to get the deepest water oxygenated while still keeping it cold enough for the trout. If someone wants to do that to their pond we can do that, but I won't say here on the board what we did to get them to survive - we have to keep some of what we learned over the years to ourselves and not give everything away. Does KFC give out their batter recipe?

During the winter the trout will continue to eat floating pellets providing the pond is not iced over so I think they will hit top water. For sure they hit spinners/spoons/curly tail jigs/crank baits at a greater frequency than any other fish in the pond during the winter. When ice fishing they are caught more frequently than even Yellow Perch. I talked to a guy at the city park pond that caught and released 342 of the 1,000 trout that we stocked last year, and some of the trout that he caught were caught before, they still had the hook in them. If hooked deeply, he'd just cut the line and release them.

I stocked a dozen Golden Rainbow Trout in a very good customers pond as a prank without telling him. I got a phone call when he pulled one out, "What the @#&! is this fish? I've never seen it before??" He wasn't upset, just wondering just what this golden colored fish was. He caught all 12 while ice fishing, and the pond is 4 acres.

Up here, they need to be harvested by mid May to the end of June, depending on the year to get them out before they die.

We typically stock RBT that weigh a pound each, but we have stocked fish that were two pounds each. just due to availability.

Trout will put on weight exceptionally fast if fed a good fish food. I stocked a few of the 2#'ers in my pond, and when caught in early June they were 7# and 24" long. It seems that trout will convert a good commercial fish food like Optimal Bass food at almost a 1:1 ratio.

Thanks for the info. Lots to consider. I’m just not sure we would get them fished out in time. I don’t like eating them that much. Would be fun though.

I am not a big trout fan, but smoked trout is a different story.

You can tell which one was eating more pellets!

That was awfully considerate of the skinny trout to bring you a dollar so he could also get some pellets!

If the trout figure out how to order Optimal pellets online, then we will probably never be able to land another one in the future.

Yesterday I sent the last cageful of BG/HBG along with a few GSH and crayfish to my buddy's quarry lake.
Traps are all out until spring. I still need to pull the deep diffuser and set one up shallow. As low as the water
is right now I'm a little worried about getting the truck hung up putting the boat in. It might be a better idea
to use a tractor instead of the truck.

My Christmas present to myself arrived at the stealership last week. Picked it up on Saturday.
I liked the '21 model so well that I decided to upgrade trim packages and paint job.

Nice truck Augie! Every time I watch an episode of Yellowstone I think I need a 3/4 ton Ram with the Cummins. Just because I’m a mixture of Kevin Costner and Rip. Hahahah!!!
My apologies if you haven’t seen Yellowstone.

Not sure which one of ya this is but could be on to something lol.
https://www.reddit.com/r/redneckeng...;utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Partly sunny and almost 60 degrees yesterday - I fed a little Aquamax 500 and had sunfish (and one big gravid YP) show up and eat at both ponds.

Are YP supposed to be gravid now?

Or do they sometimes get confused by fluctuating water levels and strange weather patterns?

I typed a YP egg question and immediately thereafter read a post with a discussion covering that exact topic from azteca, titled "Yellow Perch Eggs". (Dr. Perca even answers some questions in that thread.)

I knew the Pond Boss Forum was awesome. I didn't realize that the forum was also prescient!

Was surprised to see a lot of fish come up to feed today.

test

LeighAnn so pleased to see your post. What is up with the pictures? They seem to be loading for me. What was the problem and what was the fix? Thank you for whatever you did!

Mounted a trailer hitch ball on the back blade and put the pond hopper boat into the water.
Pulled the deep diffuser, cleaned it up, then hung it shallow off the dock for the winter.
Using the tractor was a good move. The rear wheels were in the water by the time the
boat floated off the trailer. I'd have buried the truck if I tried with that.

Will be happy to see some precipitation return to the middle of Misery.

Augie, that's a good idea to mount a ball on the back blade. I've put a receiver hitch on my bucket which I use for moving trailers around, including for launching my pond boat.
Would you mind posting a pic of how you attached the ball to the blade?
I share your concern about backing the truck into the water. I'll have to measure just how far my rear wheels will be submerged if I were to use the back blade orientation. As it is, my front tires get wet; In 4-wheel drive, I've always been able to back up out of the pond even if I have to lock the rear differential. Tractors seem to pull forward better than backward, so your orientation may have advantages.
BTW, that's quite the industrial-grade machine you have there. It looks like it could drag my 25-hp Japanese Ford all over the property!

It was super easy on this blade. All I had to do was wrench it down.
You can see where a previous owner welded hitch balls on the other side of the blade.
I would have used one of those but the blade is too long spin around when its mounted to the tractor.
Was worth the $10 for a new ball to avoid the aggravation of unhooking/spinning/rehooking twice.

Nothing fancy, just put winter diffusers into two holding ponds, and I'm running them both off of the same compressor.

Thanks, Augie for the explanation and pic.
I do have reason to spin my back blade around for the occasional gravel or snow surface smoothing. But it's rare enough that I can remove the ball when I need the blade for that purpose.
I'll try it.

Augie and 4CP, I decided to diy a ramp at my pond with a 16 foot Jon boat. I’m happy with this decision. The only thing I have to do is get the battery in/out of the boat to charge for the trolling motor. The one thing I would change is using a treated 6x6 instead of a 4x4 where the winch mounts on the upright post. It’s an easy build with treated 2x4’s, 6x6, a bag of quikcrete, 4 inch x 20 foot pvc pipe halved lengthwise, 4 inch x 10 foot (2 5 foot guides driven in the pond bottom, deck screws and a hand winch. Here are a few pics.

https://imgur.com/a/zVFp7x3

Looks great!! I was going to do that same thing except use the teflon strips that they put on boat trailer bunks to make the boat slide on/off easier. Good idea about the vertical guides and the winch. I was just going tp pull it up by hand. I do have an aluminum pontoon boat canopy that has 3' brackets on each corner on the sides. I was going to put that low to the ground so the boat just slid under it, that would keep a lot of sun and rain out of the boat.

The pvc is used for the same purpose as the Teflon strips. Outdoor weather is hard on the seats, covering them would be a good idea. One thing I forgot to mention is to make sure you pull the plugs after your boat is docked. The rain will run out into the pond. Oh yeah, be sure and put the plugs in before you launch! Don’t ask me how I know this!

Got up this morning and had to have a discussion with a large male coyote that was having breakfast with a yearling buck on the opposite side of the pond. After a quick lesson on the effects of lead poisoning I am sure I won't have that problem with him again