Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations how long will bullhead stay in the mud?

Oh, geez, you wanted me to ask NON-controversial questions? You have to know me well enough to know I could never pull that off!

I'm thinking he should break a tooth on the T-Bone and fly to Lincoln to visit some part-time dentist we all know for the repairs. Condello would comandeer the plane, build a landing strip at the new Conderosa and force Todd to be his new fishing bi.....err....buddy...............wait!!! that would all be good!

Todd, considering you work land disputes for venison....move to Missouri and I'll keep you very fat and happy!

If we can pass you off as a yankee, they'll ignore it if you accidentally mistake my neighbor for a deer....your mistake will just get talked about around the hundreds of deer-camp fires until the next prize bull gets claimed as the record 2000 pound deer.

Dang, when I first read the part about the "bald, bearded guy" I wondered how the heck can Todd put on a presentation???? I should have known he couldn't grow a beard that fast!

Good intuition - my goatee is all the facial hair I need. And Ken is far from bald - that guy has hair all the way around the perimeter of his head!

More importantly, though, Rex, is that you should have instantly realized he wasn't talking about me because I have virtually NOTHING of value to say on pond-related matters! Unlike JHAP, I don't even have a relevant/meaningful post count started!

How long will the bullheads remain in the mud? Exactly 2 hours and 14 minutes after you have absolutely, positively concluded they are no longer there and restocked your pond! ;-)

More seriously, I think big bass will eventually wipe them out by eating the young as the old die off.

I'm not sure that is really the case. When I was growing up, some very close friends/neighbors had a 30-40 acre lake on their farm in northern Wisconsin. For at least the approximately 15 years I fished it, it had minimal fishing pressure -- mostly my friend's dad, my friend, a few cousins, and me. It had a good population of small to moderate northern pike (15-25 inch) and small to moderate moderate yellow perch (slender 7-10 inch) -- but no real trophies. In those days, there was little catch and release, although we still had to meet state regulations. We took all pike over 18 inches and virtually every perch. We might have taken 25-50 pike and a few hundred perch each season.

But, this lake was dominated by black bullheads. In the early summer, there were huge "clouds" of black bullhead fry and fingerlings. If we wanted bullhead for dinner, we would simply throw bread crumbs off the end of the dock, and then use a dip net to get our needed quota of 1-2 lb. bullheads for dinner.

I don't know why the pike and perch didn't wipe out the bullheads, but they never did in my days on that lake.

Update: 2 weeks ago when we had some warmer weather I went ahead and drained it again to see if they had come out of the mud. After completely draining it there was nothing but a few tadpoles. This means that either they are all gone or they have remained buried in the mud since October even the pond had completely refilled by Thanksgiving and stayed at full pool since then. My gut tells me they are still in the mud waiting for warm weather. The rain we had last Thursday completely refilled it again. I plan to grow some forage fish in it.

Friend of mine who works in fisheries biology told me a while ago they netted a pond full of bullheads and made a pile of bullheads over three feet high. Over a week later they came back to spread the pile out for decomposition purposes and the bullheads in the middle were still alive, living off of the slime, I guess. My pond has bullheads also. I am thinking an over stocking of muskies is in order.

You may find an overstocking of LMB will do a better job of controlling bullheads than muskies would. Depends on a number of variables, including at what size your over abundant bullheads are stunting.

Oh yeah, and welcome to the forum!

The LMB would be cheaper than Muskies as well. (and easier to source!)

Welcome from another Hoosier.