Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss Has Spring Sprung?

How are you sexing them Travis? The only obvious thing I can see is the bars are not as pronounced on the females.

I may have to give that a try if I'm in a hurry, but I usually hydrate the feed the night before...

Yes, females have thin brownish bars. The males have wider turquoise bars. That is the most obvious difference. It becomes more much obvious when they are in full breeding colors.

Ken, the dog is no problem. Eva (or is it Ava?) rarely barks at me.

Have Gillie suit will travel.

If you're outside and she doesn't know who you are she'll bark! Did I tell you about the bear traps only she and I know where?

There are a lot of blades of green grass emerging in our lawn. It is way too early to get the mowers ready.

The weeds and grass is started to grow here. It has been mowed once. The rain next week will for sure make them grow.

I went out to one of the 1/10th acre ponds I use for holding mostly male yellow perch and female bluegill broodfish. I quickly caught 25 males and had them for dinner. I was also pleasantly surprised by about 20 females which I moved to the all female trophy pond.

No more deep frying for me. I dipped them in egg batter, then dredged in Italian bread crumbs, and baked at 350 F. for 15 minutes. Just as good as deep frying but healthier! Additionally less messy with no oil left over.

Wouldn't it have been healthier to eat ony 1 or 2 fish.

No AP these are special perch. The more you eat the longer you live.

Actually they were quite small, which is typical of males, and it took a lot of fillets to make a meal.

Just saw the weather forecast tonight. They're calling for 85°F on Tuesday! Pretty much high 70's - low 89's all week, then 65°F for a high on Sat.

I am testing out the AC now to make sure no surprises are in store.

It sure was a PITA driving around GH today. People everywhere!

Some of the sights were really nice

We hit 85 in north central WV yesterday. What an amazing day it was. 70s all this week with one day forecast at 80 again. I've been seeing lots of fish action in our ponds and have caught several LMB already as have the kids. BG aren't up to feeding yet, but they have to be getting close. Far more activity in the pond than we've seen in the 3 springs we've owned it so far.

I caught and filleted about 25 more male perch today. I also caught and moved 12 females to the all female perch pond.

No egg ribbons yet although the males squirt all over when you go to take them off the hook. It appears they are rarin' to go.

Got my smallmouth and yellow perch production ponds squared away today. Treated for filamentous algae and Chara with Curtine plus granular, and added some Whitecap to control and pondweed species. Then I fertilized both ponds. Won't be long and it will be time to catch and move broodstock smallies to the their pond.

Five big females and about 19 males in a floating cage are already in the perch production pond. Some brush in there too. Worked beautifully last year. Once the eggs had hatched I pulled the cages and broodstock fish.

Good for you Todd!

Thanks, and great pics of the 25 you caught and ate the other day! Sounds like that pond is really producing for you.

Todd,

Actually it's become more of a holding pond since I took the trout off line for a couple of years.

It's supposed to hold male only perch and female only bluegills as I want to control reproduction in separate ponds from the grow out ponds. Apparently the female perch are showing up because when I sexed the perch some were not definite males but not clearly females so they went into this pond. Looks most of these fish if not all turned out to be females. I also had a few male bluegill in the pond and subsequent reproduction due to the dumping in of some RAS mixed sex bluegills when I needed the tanks for yellow perch.

I will be seining and draining the pond in the next few days and will once again use it as trout pond this fall. Still haven't decided exactly what I will do with it until then.

BTW good to hear from you!

That's pretty cool, Cecil. I had forgotten you put a hold on trout production for awhile. I just remember some amazing pics of beautiful trout you were producing, but seem to recall that you ran into some problems with them.

Good to have an evening to check back in. Been running with my hair on fire (well, given my hairstyle of choice, you know what I mean!) and haven't had much time to check in. It's been a great early spring for me, though, with a decent handful of days opening up and allowing me to take a little time for myself at the farm. Hoping to do more of that this year along with starting some infrastructure project designed to get us closer to building a house and moving out there.

Heck yes Todd, get off that cul-de-sac and get thee out to the country! The kids will have a blast playing around outside, and so will the dogs!

I'm hoping it ends up being sooner than later! We're going to be getting water and electric run in to our outbuilding and then installing an aerator for septic. The plan is to build a pavilion off of the outbuilding so they are connected and build a bathroom in it. Next step, perhaps get a camper set up out there for housing till we build. Planning to build a pad for the camper with water, electric, and LP then eventually sell the camper and maybe build a workshop on the pad once we have the house in place. I'm hoping to get all of this initial stuff done prior to summer officially kicking off.

Sounds like a good plan. They make some pretty durn nice campers. Make sure the A/C works, I hope I'm wrong, but I think you'll need it this summer.

A/C in a camper is a must!

I have the A/C going right now in my apartment. It is not that warm outside, but really humid.

It's gonna be 80 degrees today and I am going to be stuck in a hot factory all day with presses pounding all around.

We hit 86 today and it was humid after having gotten heavy rain in storms that lasted almost the entire night. My wife and our kids, plus a couple of their friends, spent the day at the farm while I paid for it. She said it was absolutely stifling at times.

The camper does have a nice A/C unit and thermal wrap layer to promote heating/cooling efficiency and, after today's weather, she seemed to think having a place get a little respite from the heat would have been nice. Might have been a solid selling point!

Snowing here this morning!

We have a light frost here this morning, I hope my apple trees and my peach trees don't get bit by it. My peach trees are done blooming and the fruit has set, my apple trees are almost done blooming. Round two is forecast tonight.