Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Lusk,Cody,Willis,Anybody, Unintentional Drawdown

I've done a search and read most of the threads on drawdowns. The biggest downsides to a
drawdown are the chance of the pond not filling back up, or having a fish kill. This weekend,
(after falling prey to Bobs April Fools Joke) Iwent to the pond to unwinterize it. You see,
every fall I have to crack open the valve to let water run so the pipe doesn't freeze and burst.
Every spring I close it up and the standpipe becomes a water level. This year I wasn't able to
get to the pond for the last month, and the normally 4 1/2 to 5 acre pond is down to 1 1/2 to
2 acres. I'm not too worried about the water level coming back ( a spring helps and good
runoff usually keep the pond overflowing. Also walking around the pond I did not find any
dead fish. Am I correct in thinking everything else should be a positive from this? I have a
few larger bass 17” to twentysomething, and an overpopulation of 8” to 12” bass. I have
plenty of bigger Bluegills that would survive predation. I'm hoping the big Bass will thin out
some of the smaller bass, and when the water returns everything will have room to flourish.
Am I right in my thinking? Are there any other downsides that I'm missing? Sorry for being
a long winded, just wanted to give needed info. Thanks to anyone who read this to the end!
PS I'm also going to try to get back there to and do some underwater landscaping before the water comes back up.

Jimmy :

I am listing some links on drawdowns for you. When do you think the water will be back up near full? Here are 2 good ones. Note the comments by Dave Willis (great post) in the first one and Bill Cody (great posts and above and beyond the call of duty)in the second.

http://www.pondboss.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=7;t=000287;p=1#000000

http://www.pondboss.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=3&t=000111&p=3

Your drawdown probably did no harm, especially if you still have water at least six feet deep. It dropped slowly, most likely releasing the dirtiest water in the pond. You're right on about the fish..larger bass will eat smaller ones. Fish adjust their numbers to the smaller size of the pond, then when the pond re-fills, fish will spread out and have more reason to spawn. I have seen the best spawns ever in ponds drawn down and then refilled.
Another positive is that much of your shallowest water has been exposed to frigid winter temperatures. If you had a problem with excess aquatic plant life, the drawdown will help. Excess plant life freezes and dries. New water will cover the area, and aquatic plants are behind from the beginning.
Since your drawdown was from water flowing out rather than drought, odds are you have done no harm, but have actually helped the pond.
That's my opinion, we'll await others.

I foresee few problems. Bob describes how the aquatic macrophytes will be affected. Depending on how fast the pond refills will determine how much rooted weed growth reoccurs this summer. Numers of smaller bgill and smaller bass should be reduced due to crowding of fish into the smaller acerage. If the pond refills by spawning time of bluegill (June-July) you should have a big crop of YOY bgill by this fall.

Thanks for the replies guys! Eric, thanks for the links.The Max depth of pond is 28 ft,right now it is about 8 ft low and formed a 20 ft fishbowl.As far as the water level coming back, when I bought the property in Jan 2002 the surface area was about an acre, (previous owner did a drawdown to replace a gate valve)and by that July 4th the water was overflowing. Thats why I'm not too worried about it (of course this will be the spring of no rain).As usual answers bring more questions.Would this effect the cattails, being out of the water and frozen for some time? Or should I manually remove them while I have a chance? Bill, my pond seems to thrive off of a periphtyon based type of ecosystem (http://www.pondboss.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=20;t=000976#000005
How do you think this might be affected?
Thanks Jimmy

Eric, do you think you could moderate that into a link, It's a great posting by BC. Thanks

Jimmy -- good responses already. I'm not sure that I can add much. In my experience (North Country), the 17-20 inch bass don't eat many of the 10-12 inch bass, even under the drawdown conditions. I suspect that they should really have put a dent in the 4-8 inch bass, which should help create a little gap for the future. However, as Bob already said, expect a great spawn of the largemouth bass this year, which may require future thinning/culling.

Jimmy -- I agree and have done so.

Thanks guys! This is why this place is the Best!!