I built this today and thought some people might want to see it to get some ideas. Last year some fishery biologists came out to take a sample of our pond for data to make sure the mining didn’t affect it any and they had a trap similar to this (just not as big or as heavy built). I didn’t know this however apparently the fish swim the pond in a circle at night so as they go down the shoreline looking for food they run into the barricade that I have strung from shore and turn and swim along it into the fish trap. Those guys caught so many fish that I let the bass and bluegill go and it still took me over an hour to clean all the crappie. I can’t wait til morning to see what is in it!
If anybody has any ideas for trapping out fish, please post them. I sold this property and they are going to drain the lake in about a month so I want to get as many fish out of it as possible. I've managed it well for a couple decades so it is loaded with fish. We plan on eating the crappie and moving the bass, catfish, redears and bluegills to other ponds and strip pits around us.
Whether successful, or not, please let us know how this has worked.
It looks great. I've unfortunately built made a number of things I thought would be irresistible to fish, or other critters, and many of my results have been rather dismal.
I need to get a number of fish out of one of my ponds, yet I really don't want to drain it.
I hope your trap works. If so, I'll be building several.
Thanks, Ken
P.S. Welcome to Pond Boss. We really appreciate new ideas, trials, and photos.
If you want to build several, better take a week off work! LOL I have almost 20 man hours in that one (although i tend to "over engineer" everything). It's the same type set up the bioligists used to sample our pond so it should work well. I'll post pics of whatever I catch in the morning. I plan on pulling the fish out every morning until they drain the lake.
Here's the mornings catch. Looks like I'm having crappie for dinner tonight!
The concept worked perfectly however as usual my over engineering led to a problem. It was too heavy for me to pull out of the pond by myself without dragging it some which led to the vinyl coated chicken wire coming off at one edge of the bottom and I got to watch as the majority of my fish escaped. I was left with only about 20 crappie, a half dozen bluegill, a couple bass, 1 red ear and 7 turtles (which have been properly disposed of :)). Today I will fix the damage, recruit help for the morning haul each day and go back at it!
All in all I'd say it was a good success. I would have had a lot more fish if the bottom hadn't broken lose but not bad for a "learn from" experience!
Mine is set up so that the lead stays in place and I just walk out, tip the trap up and pull it in. Then I take the trap back out and center it on the lead and I'm done. Of course, I can move the lead if I want however I will wait until I get an easier lead to move. I just used what I had on hand yesterday because I wanted to get the trap in the water and start catching fish. I will have it soaking 24/7 for the next month trying to move as many fish as possible (and fill the freezer with crappie!
might have been better......live and learn. It works though. I don't know how I would have gotten the angles for funnel right with PVC though. I used angle iron because I had it and because I wanted some weight so that i didn't have to anchor it. I just want to walk out, grab the trap, bring it in and empty the fish and take it back out and set it in place. I don't want to have to deal with anchors or moving barricades or using a boat. This way I'm in and out in 5 minutes. Just going to have to tweak it a little.
As it is, it's tough to move by myself in chest deep water (which is really stomach deep water with 6 inches silt/mud). On land, picking it up was no big deal. I can just pick it up by the handles and carry it. I didn't factor in what it would be like in water. I'll figure it out though. When it's empty I just roll it end over end right back out into the water......just a little more tweaking...........
Looks good! Maybe you could add some flotation, just enough to let it hover over the bottom. You could use small empty milk jugs, plastic bottles with caps or small pieces of a pool noodle. It might take some experimenting to find out how much and where flotation is needed. You might just need some on the leading side for when you pull it in. I don't think it will drift around much unless you get waves on your pond.
I thought about flotation however it is pretty dang heavy. It might take quite a bit to do much. I had some dock bumpers laying around. Wish I still had them. 6 of them fastened to the bottom of it would definitely help. Noodles won't cut it.
what I really need is a friend that lives close enough and is crazy enough to do this every morning with me! I designed it with handles on each side so 2 people could pick it up and carry it. I forgot to factor in though that I'm only one person!
A large diameter float noodle will keep a person afloat, how much does your trap weigh? I wouldn't put the floats on the bottom, secure them to the top or midway so it won't drag on the bottom too much when your pulling it in. Try a couple of empty milk jugs, I think you'll be surprised and it might be more flotation than you need. Larger zip ties with a large noodle going around the cage will still look neat. I think there's pictures of some fish cages on here that use flotation in this manner.
I don't know. I'm not real technical. I'll grab the thermometer from my kids aquarium and check!
I just like to fish and am spoiled rotten by living in the middle of strip pit country and knowing every farmer around. I've never even had to worry about pond management (even though I did on my pond just for fun). I can't even fish all the water I have access to so I've never had the need to manage. One of my farmer neighbors just built 2 nice lakes though so I'll probably stock them for him since I get to start from scratch.
A large diameter float noodle will keep a person afloat, how much does your trap weigh?
That's because most people float themselves without much help. A steel cage is a bit different. It may not weigh as much as I do however it's buoyancy factor is far different.
The fish I caught this morning did raise a question for me though. The bluegill are far smaller than I used to have and skinnier (not near as much meat on them). I used to have real fat bluegill. This summer was a bad drought and my water level is 3' low. Over the last few years I've added brush piles (or in some cases, entire 50' hickory tree's) every 30 feet around the entire lake. I also put in 4 stacks of pallets that are 12 pallets tall with netting around them for fatheads to reproduce in. There are more minnows in my lake then a person can even imagine. No matter where you walk in, there's hundreds of them in the weeds around shore. The bass and crappie that I catch are very fat and healthy. Why would my bluegill be so skrawny?
Well.......I didn't get the trap fixed until mid afternoon (just had too much stuff going on) and when I reset it I accidentally set it upside down
Thus I decided to pull it out again this evening and empty it and reset it. Even with the the funnel higher than it should been and only soaking for a few hours I had a nice catch of about a dozen bluegill, 3 redears and a crappie (2 of the redears were VERY nice). I was pleasantly surprised given the odds that were stacked against it for those few hours. Sorry, no pics though as I barely got it done before dark.
Also, figured out flotation! I had an old dock that was falling apart and I pulled a big piece of styrofoam from it and used it to get under the trap. It was a bit of a job wedging it under but it floated the whole trap out of water safely to shore, thus not tearing any more holes in it from dragging! then I floated it right back out and set it in place. Much easier! Looking forward to a big catch in the morning and hopefully no escapees!
Pit Fisher.... I'm curious as to what kind of bait you put in your trap??? I really like the design and the floatation(sp) ideas.
I just went back and looked at your design....And I'm thinking of building one except with an entrance on both sides. One high and one low. What do you think?
Pit Fisher.... I'm curious as to what kind of bait you put in your trap??? I really like the design and the floatation(sp) ideas.
No bait. Fish swim the banks at night looking for food and run into the barricade and swim down it into the trap. Works perfect. We're adding a couple hoop style traps that a neighbor has in the morning in other parts of the lake. We'll see how they do too. I think I'll set them up with barricades too.
Pit Fisher.... I'm curious as to what kind of bait you put in your trap??? I really like the design and the floatation(sp) ideas.
I just went back and looked at your design....And I'm thinking of building one except with an entrance on both sides. One high and one low. What do you think?
I think you might end up with too many fish escaping.
I can see the handles on the side but how are you removing the fish?
The whole back side is held on by some pins. I just pull them out and it comes off. There's actually a separate back panel made out of a little bigger angle iron that I cut 1" bigger and it slides right over the back frame. Tough to see in the pics. If I remember to in the morning, I'll take a pic of it when I check the trap.
Could you put a bracket on each side, slide a piece of 5/8" or so round stock thru the bracket and add 2 tires? It should be heavy enough to keep everything on the bottom, but allow you to tip it up. pivot it backwards and then up on the tires and roll it out of the pond. (tires actually on top back edge of the unit) Wider tires won't sink into the bottom as much.
Could you put a bracket on each side, slide a piece of 5/8" or so round stock thru the bracket and add 2 tires? It should be heavy enough to keep everything on the bottom, but allow you to tip it up. pivot it backwards and then up on the tires and roll it out of the pond. (tires actually on top back edge of the unit) Wider tires won't sink into the bottom as much.
this is an old established pond. It has minimum 6-8 inches of silt that tires would sink right into. I got it pretty good now with the dock float. Here's pics of this mornings catch. Barely enough to dirty a pan! Nice redear though! For reference the panel of the trap that they are laying against is 2 feet across.
The 2nd pic of the fish in the basket is last nights catch after only a few hours in the water during the afternoon/evening.
I am finding that I am getting all left handed fish in the left side and right handed fish in the right side. Should I cull all the lefties to prevent cross traffic in the pond?
Check the fish that go in the back of trap, probably all males.
You know I never noticed that before but you are right. Except for a few butch female redears. Probably due to their genetic superiority over smaller sunfishes giving them an inflated view of themselves.
I also noticed very few left handed crappie. My theory is that the fractal patterns on the sides of the crappie were designed to induce confusion in their prey causing many sunfish that escaped predation at an early age to become unsure of themselves and develop inferiority complex's and turn to isolating themselves in the weeds and brush piles. Without proper socialization these ones developed adaptation techniques based on their environment and those with better escape routes to the left developed "enviromentally induced" left handedness. Then when they spawn and raise their children creating a "learned behavior" of lefthandedness in their offspring. I believe this to be the downfall of many once great ponds. Just a theory........
Pit Fisher, churchs have been started on less theory then yours. How big are those croppie? Are they thick across back? It is amazing how fast fish grow in a pit like that. What is your theory on that?
I have incredible food in our lake. Everywhere you go there's hundreds of minnows in the weeds along the edge. Easy to get fat with that much to eat. Here's a pic of a second trap system we set up today. It's a 100' sein ran across to the far bank as a barricade and then 2 hoop nets (one on each side) installed at the end as traps. I got anxious and pulled the other trap during mid day today and had about 20 more bluegill and a half dozen big red ears in it just from sitting from 8-2. Anxious to see what the 2 traps yeild this evening when I empty them again before the overnight soak.
I don't know. I didn't measure them. some were probably 11"-12" and others 13"-14". Not the bigger size that we sometimes catch. Sometimes we catch 15"-17".
They were really pretty fish. I am going to but 6 dz. small shiners and try to give them a beating tomorrow. Don't have the enery to bass fish but love the croppie anyway. We have taken out over 900 that I suspect look a lot like yours. Good luck taking your fish out.
Neither trap setup yielded much today. About a dozen fish total. Pretty dissapointing. Kinda sucks getting in this cold water and doing all that work for not much fish to move.
Location of the trap means a lot on the numbers of fish that it will catch on any given day. If you aren't seeing a lot of fish, and you know they are there, move it.
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I designed it with handles on each side so 2 people could pick it up and carry it. I forgot to factor in though that I'm only one person! 
then I floated it right back out and set it in place. Much easier! Looking forward to a big catch in the morning and hopefully no escapees!
