Pond Boss Forums AERATION Should I aerate? BACK WATER G-MAN are you still out there

I'd like to know how your fertilization program is going. I'm from south/south-central IL and the pond managers I've talked to North of the Mason-Dixon line recommended not fertilizing up here because there is enough in the agricultural runoff. Any additional fertilization will result in increased aquatic vegetaion. Just wanted to see if that was so or not.

Hey green head! I'm still out here. Sometimes I wonder where that is, but I'm still here. Sorry it took so long to respond to you but I haven't been checking in lately. As far as my fertility program goes, I think it's still a little early to tell how its going. I fertilized three times last year with liquid 10-34-0. The local fertilizer company will sell this at a very cheap cost. The first application was 1.5 gal/surface acre and the next two were 1 gal/surface acre. I used a golf ball tied to fishing string (too cheap to buy a sechi disc) and most of the summer I couldn't see it at 18 inches. Whenever it got to the point where I could see it at 24 inches, I made another application of 1 gal/acre. I think I went a little overboard on the last treatment because a green scum formed on the surface and stayed around for about 1 week before it cleared up. (my wife wasn't happy because it looked terrible) I believe it has helped the growth of my fish. Bass stocked as fingerlings on July 9th, 2001 are now 14+ inches with the bigest at 15inches and man are they fat. The bluegill/redear were stocked as fingerlings in October of 2000 and they are now 7 inches long. Catfish stocked at the same time range are from 15 inches to 22 inches. This seems to be a little better than the average growth rates for newly stocked ponds in the area. I never had a problem with algea on the surface. My pond only gets about 4 acres of agricultural runoff, the rest is wooded. My banks are very steep and water gets to a depth of 3 feet very quickly. Because of this, I don't have any problems with rooted plants and hopefully never will. So far this spring, there is a lot of green algae on all of the submergerd wood. There isn't any algae floating on the top. I don't remember there being so much algae on the submerged wood last spring and wonder it has something to do with the fertilizing last year. The water is clear with a visibility of 3 feet of so. When the surface temps hit 60 degrees here in the next couple of weeks(presently 54 degrees) I plan to apply 1 gal of fertilizer per acre as I did last year. Hopefully this will get a good bloom going for when the bass and bluegill spawn. The real chalenge will be keeping the bass growing once they get to 16 inches. I'm still a rookie at this and would appriciate any advice or help anyone has to offer. My pond is located in south central Illinois aproximately 15 miles east of Effingham.