Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Hello

Hello everone,
I havent been on the board in awhile. ive been off to college since last may at Texas A&M. Anyway i hope everyone is doing better than i am. im losing all my fish to low water and temperature right. havent had a drop of running water make into a pond since march. All my ponds are 2ft or less and my lake is down to 3ft at the deepest point. Already basicly lost all adult bass in my ponds. in the lake i have lost a few of everything and the largest number of fish dieing are the longnose gar(not a big loss). if the ponds now could catch some water the fish would recover over the spring and have adult bass by fall. The lake is another story because i cant catch any forge in my castnet when i threw last week. i think there is a few bluegill alive but i havent seen a shad flick on the surface in months and that was the main forage. anyway i really sad about the lakes status right because last march i was able to catch catfish in the 10 pound range consistantly, caught a 5 pound bass, figure out how to catch out a large number of the carp without hurting other species in the process, and discover i have white bass when i caught a 2 pounder in the castnet. Anyway i pray for rain for all of us because people where im at are starting to burn pear for the cattle and in the next month and a half most of the people down here will proubly lose all there fish in their ponds because of the depth they are at.
I hope everyone has a merry christmas and happy new year!

Zach,

Given your location, you have lots of company to share your water problems. The board has been peppered with many Texans expressing the same concerns about their ponds. We had a dry summer this year, however you wouldn't think so if you looked at the ponds now.

One approach to your situation, with the water levels so low, may be to look at this as an opportunity to do some pond maintenance, i.e. desilting, weed extraction, addition of structure
etc...


Merry Christmas!

Zach,

Yes, it has been a very dry year...started about last February for us in East Texas and except for isolated rains (we received 3.5 inches two weeks ago) it has been really tough. The really scary part for me is that we are now over halfway through our "rainy" season, which lasts until March. Unless the patterns change, we are in for some serious problems this summer.

Each problem, however, presents opportunity and in this case, like Russ stated, this is a great opportunity to clean out and add depth to our ponds.

Merry Christmas to you Zach.

Zach, it is a cliche' to say I feel your pain but I really do. We are told that Montague County only got 1/2 the average annual rainfall. I'm trying to figure out who got my half. I've had less than 10 inches this year and things look pretty ugly.

Thanks for all the replys. Russ it is a good time to some pond maintence. we have putt in a cement dock in front of our pier on the lake and are trying to price the digging of a new pit in our 8 acre tank. The water isnt low enough to do any draglining in the old pits but plan on makeing a on acre hole about 10 feet deep and 17-20ft deep when the pond is full.