Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations stocking a quarry

i have a friend that owns a limestone quarry. production ended a few years ago and now he has about a 30 acre lake that is 100 plus ft deep. he put a few hundred fhm minnows in there that he trapped from my pond. he said those few hundred turned to 1000's quickly. he did this as the water was rising and wasn't near 30 acres at the time. he even went to a supplier and bought a few hundred cnbg. seems like there is no way to ever make this water fertile enough to establish a proper food chain. one supplier recommended tsf, but i never see him establishing enough plankton for that to work. is there anything you all can think of he can stock or plant to make this a decent fishery?

with all the cracks and crevices, i was thinking crawfish, but i heard they have to burrow on dry land to produce their young. most of the land around the pit is stone.

he does plan on installing a feeder soon.

you should contact Nate Herman he has a similar lake that is very clear but not fertile. He spends most of his money on fish food since the fish dont spawn well in his lake.

What are the goals for this lake? Sounds like a perfect situation for hybrid striped bass.

Once the quarry fills to capacity and develops a thermocline, measure that depth and temperature. If you have the ability to get someone out there in mid-August with a dissolved oxygen meter conduct a temperature - oxygen profile. You want 5ppm DO in deeper water at 65F-68F. It is possible that you could stock some trout in November and they might live in the deep water at the thermocline or in hypolimnion (deepest zone) all year. If the quarry water is clear (10-20ft) oxygen could be adequate for some year round trout. Regardless, it would be worth a try if you and the owner are gamblers.

Really deep quarries such as 60-100+ft can develop a zone of water that stays chemically 'bad' (sulphurized) and anoxic year round. This deep water zone does not go through any seasonal circulation or turnover. The condition is called meromixis or meromictic. The deepest layer (monimolimnion) of water is perennially isolated from the upper, normal, annual, circulating layer. A high chemical concentration zone or gradient called the chemocline always separates the two layers. Fish are not able to live in this deep water that has high chemical concentrations and no dissolved oxygen.
A meriomictic lake can be low nutrient (oliogotrophic) or nutrient enriched (eutrophic). See my later post below for examples of two meriomictic lakes in MN.

I believe only certain crayfish burrow to breed. Many breed right in the deep water. You just need the correct species. with lots of rocks and cracks crayfish could do very well.

I wonder how big a compressor it would take to pump air down top 100 ft..LOL

i think one brother would like to stock spotted bass. the other brother likes lmb and he also likes the big bg i have been growing. he has a pretty good stock of fhm now and has added a few cnbg.

what would be the forage for the hybrid stripers?

one supplier recommended stocking shad, i think they would starve, right?

From what I have seen of spotted bass, they tend to stunt and overpopulate much worse than LMB.

A buddy of mine had a small quarry pond that was about 15 acres or so, and about 40' deep. It was near Boardman, OH.

The edges had overhanging brush, and fish really only lived near the brush on the edges.

Nothing happened in the deeper water, as far as we could tell.

If fathead minnows are thriving, threadfin shad can, too. Water clarity will have an impact on population size of shad, as will stocking density of hybrid stripers. But, you can feed the hybrid stripers. They're feed-trained from the get-go. Largemouth bass would thrive peripherally, but if there is minimal spawning habitat for bass and bluegill, your odds of success drop.

Most deep large quarries have a road that goes into the bottom for removing rock. This road will be your spawning area for bass and sunfish species. A fishery even a low carrying capacity one in 30 acres is still a lot of fish for a few anglers to manage. Plus the access to the bottom road will be a productive littoral shallow shelf for a food growing, fish attracting area, although a small percentage of the water surface area. HSB are primarily open water fish so are the trout. Feeders mounted on shore or floating that are spreading fish food would help boost the productivity and maybe 50% the amount of fish the quarry would support. Give us some weekly or monthly water clarity readings latter this year and that data will allow for a better evaluation of your quarry.

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92624#Post92624

I wonder if these big quarries that are deep with vertical wall sides would be candidates for some inovative structure projects to increase the area the fish use.

The water is likely too deep to use traditional structure placed on the bottom. But to me it looks like the perfect application for modified floating islands.

Create floating islands as have been described numerous times here on PBF in different threads, but change their below water portion into upside down structure. Commercial fish attractors should work. Inverted pallet structures should work. About any type of structure a person can think of that could be attached to the bottom of a floating island. The main design concern would be having the ballast correct so that it does not try to do something weird like turn upside down. I'm familiar with that problem.

Place these islands, anchored to the bottom, within casting distance from the shore line. Or better yet, make a "fish highway" of them from the shore line out to casting distance. Do this multiple places around the BOW and I would think the carrying capacity could be increased considerably.

It works perfectly, in my mind at least. How it would fare in the real word in a quarry remains in question.

I think 60-100 ft deep steep sided quarries are a different type of habitat, require a different type of fishery, different management methods, and different angling adventure/methods.

artificial reefs with 30-40ft legs would offer some mid water structure. would have to get creative.

I wonder what the coolest water temp in the winter at the max survivable depth..IE O2 , during the winter?

I fished some deep limestone quarries years ago. I recall that they are fairly sterile. The ones I fished were oligotrophic in the extreme. Not much can be done in the deeper parts IMO.

Scott,

Thanks for sharing the info on your buddy's quarry. Very interesting project. Are there any areas where the water is shallower?

Deep limestone quarries are often oliogothrphic which means low productivity very clear water with secchi disk to be a minimum of 16ft. This results in very low predator fish biomass per acre of around 4 to 6 pounds per acre; forage fish 40-60 pounds per acre. If the quarry has water visibilities of 14-20 ft expect total predator pounds in the 30 acres to be a total of 100-180 lbs. Feeding pellets to trout or HSB can boost this total amount of predators to maybe 2X to 3X. Secchi clarity will likely decrease as the fish poundage increases.

For an oligothrophic condition the usual minimal secchi disk transparency is 16ft. A famous example of a lake like this is Lake Superior(secchi 45-60ft). There is a lake category that has an extremely low nutrient condition called ultra-oligotrophic where secchi disk clarity is such as Crater lake 75-135ft and LK Tahoe 120ft.

I found a couple examples non-mixing or rarely mixing lakes. They are Brownie Lake(18 ac) and Deming Lake(14 ac) both in MN.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00196776
http://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/121474

Seems like any shallow to 10' deep or so structure plus a feeder would make all the difference in the world. Assuming the water quality is such that it does not cause problems.

Water in deep quarries with little wind action can become stratified in the extreme. Aeration would require powerful and expensive pumps that would also be expensive to operate. Would there be deep oxygen in winter? That might be debatable too. Any fish not on ledges or in the shallow end would have to stay suspended all the time if near any floating structure. The overall situation starts out unfavorably. Just my two cents.

Had not thought about what the fish would do over winter. Good point. Pallet platforms integrated into the structure for them to rest and sleep on??

As far as aeration, in a smaller deep quarry the diffuser could be anchored and let suspend at whatever depth, say for instance 20', and just circulate the upper portion of water. Maybe?? Only aereate and put structure in a corner or section?

While this starting to sound expensive, maybe no more so than building a pond.

Ought to be a way to utilize at least a portion of the additional upper water than what is not already being utilized.

Cum'mon. This is PBF for gosh sakes! Time to think outside the box! Or in this case the quarry.

I have been diving in them many years ago (try about 1968). They were very clear (lead and zinc mines). They all have over the many years reduced considerably in visability because of algae blooms and what once would not support fish started to do so. Nature over 50 year or so changed them. I wonder if the process could not be sped up with some additional feed (fertility) and structure.

Maybe not worth the effort. But I would think a limestone quarry would be a much easier and faster task than a lead-zink one because of the water composition quality.

Snrub, I've had the same thoughts about speeding up the process. How about, figuratively speaking, adding a "couple of bags of fertilizer"?

If the quarry water is not mixing, as was suggested in an earlier post, fertilizer added properly to the shallower water just might stay up where it could do some good.

Is it safe to say that where a pond does not freeze over, the fish may not be seeking 39 degree water at the very bottom (100 feet down)? In other words, the coldest water temp experienced is not low enough to cause winter stratification? That would allow fish to use shallower water all year?

To me, getting this BOW "up and running" as a productive fishing hole offers some fascinating and very unusual challenges and opportunities. I don't know if it may be analogous to ocean environment where life is most abundant along the shore reefs and shelf, the upper levels of open water hold some pelagic life, then the "deep" out in the center, not so much.

Great thread! Good brain exercise!

Maybe the owner could invite some fill in via disposal of clean fill like broken concrete from highway projects. Once it was filled to within 30 feet of the surface, it would be much more productive. This might take a long time, but if the owner has long term goals, it might be worthwhile to look into. Of course, most of the fill would tend to stay near the edges.

The quarries sound like the gravel pits here. They push the sand off the top to expose the gravel and then dig it out until they get water deep enough to float a gravel barge and then suck the gravel off the bottom. Some of them are 50 feet deep with very clear water. It leaves a nice size lake when they are finished and sportsman clubs usually lease or buy them. I've seen none that are good fisheries but I don't know of any that feed the fish either. Lots of 7-8 inch crappie in the spring around the edges near the brush but I've never heard of a large crappie being caught An occasional 3-4 pound LMB but nothing big. Some edible BG but not a lot. Some have stocked Walleye and CC but they are rarely caught and aren't very large. I've rarely seen so much as a minnow near shore. I suspect it is lack of forage because everything small gets eaten. The open water is non productive and what fish are there are near the shore in shallower water.

Open oceans areas are basically the equivalent of deserts on land. They are very infertle.

But just like deserts that will support herds of animals, the herds or individuals are just far and few in between.

Ocean life is concentrated around where there is nutrients and some structure, just like ponds. Just like the edges of deserts give way to temperate areas that support greater life, so do oceans support greater life in costal areas.