Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Property Projects & Construction What did you do at your pond today?

Having my eyes corrected only for distance. Will still need readers.

Got back from Montana, and feral hogs welcomed me back. The drought has moved hogs out of the river bottom, and they've moved to available food and water. Unfortunately, that's my big pond. Besides tearing up the banks, they're digging up my hybrid water lily tubers. I put out 5 cameras, and borrowed one huge trap from my next door neighbor. They're coming his way also. We're seeing sounders of over 30.

My plan is to trap, and gear up in a Ted Nugent loincloth and a spear instead of his Byrdland. If that doesn't work, I'm also upgrading my 300blkout for this occasion. I'm on a quest.

My new guests





2 shot this week by my neighbor. Both over 250#

Glad we don't have them here (yet)!

Same here!

Ugggh not a good problem. Sure, someone could use the meat.

Can you contact the Optimal people and have them come up with a good fish food product based on ground up feral hogs?

Customers can call them to drop off a bag of fish food at their door and have them take away five hogs they just culled the previous day. Win-win for everybody!

Bad thing is that the big boars aren’t to edible….. if they stink feed the yotes…. The meat tastes just like it smells…. Ugh. If the boars are under 100# they’re usually good. Killed one over 300 that had been cut and it was fine. There are tons of them here now that I don’t even mess with unless a big boar…. Haven’t been many of them around as I wore them out early in the year . Wish could find someone to eat them but they want you to clean, quarter and bag before they take them ….. sooo yotes and buzzards get the call

t

I would assume the buzzard population in Texas is going up while the number of feral hog carcasses is increasing.

Fetid, rotting meat is a delicacy for the buzzards!

The low water and heat caused a fish kill here. Only in one single pond out of 5. My RES/SMB pond had about 50 SMB and HSB floating along the south bank a couple days ago. All about the same size, about 14 inches long. Pond is about 18" low and we got a hard and fast cold 2.3" rain and cool down in air temperature. I suspect the quick change was just too much for the fish to handle. I am pretty sure the pond was over populated and needed some removed. Mother nature beat me to it.

The strange thing is, my old pond right next to it, no problem. My big main pond and the associated sediment pond and forage pond, no problem (but they all get night time aeration with the exception of the old pond). Just the one pond had the problem.

I suspect, but don't know for sure, the reason the old pond did not run into a problem was because of the size mix of fish. The RES/SMB pond had those 50 fish all nearly the same identical size. Only saw one or two slightly smaller. In the old pond I have a few larger LMB that I suspect keep the smaller fish thinned out. In the RES/SMB pond too many of the same size fish with no big lower number apex predators to thin out the smaller population. Thus over population of that one size class.

Was a sad thing to see but the way it goes sometimes. That sudden cold water runoff going to the bottom of an anoxic pond was a death blow to the larger fish in that pond. At least that is my theory. The other ponds with aeration or a better variety of fish predator sizes seemed to fair much better.

I've not been feeding anything because of the heat and low water situation. So added feed was not the problem.

John, sorry to hear about your fish kill.

I know you had aeration to your forage pond. Did your RES/SMB pond have aeration?

I’m butt deep in hogs. When we shoot one, we drag it out where buzzards can get to it. I’ve never been one that wanted to make any animal dead that I won’t eat. I make an exception on hogs. Dang things on my place are loaded with ticks so we are careful when handling them..

Some day, just about every rural land owner will have them.

No. Neither did my old pond right next to it which did not have a fish kill.

On a positive note, the buzzards I think were happy today.

I hope not, but I suspect I’ll see it eventually. I was at our place all week working on food plots and deer stands. I have problems with the pond, but that’s on another thread.
I did see a dead armadillo by the road yesterday. Not that far from Hannibal MO. I guess the hogs won’t be far behind.
If you guys need someone to come down and shoot….

Spent a some time removing some weeds from my pond that has a massive amount of gelatinous balls attached to it. I am still trying to figure out exactly what it is and how to get rid of it.

John, sorry about your fish kill, I know it hurts when it happens.

I am impressed with your dedication to managing the "total ecosystem"! Still sorry about your fish kill though.

For a separate positive note - based on your postings I believe part of your pond management efforts are due to a pursuit of knowledge. I hope you enjoy starting a new project on the RES/SMB pond now that it has become a blank slate. If so, then I expect some entertaining Pond Boss postings in the future!

I visited a fraternity at Blank State one time.

As I recall, their Latin motto was "Tabula rasa"

From the fish I observed on the bank, they all seemed to be suspiciously almost the exact same size. I did not see any smaller fish at all. So if I am lucky there will still be plenty of smaller SMB that will come roaring back. The HSB are probably toast because the ones I put in were all in the same size class so I am guessing most of them were among the 50 or so fish that were floating along the bank. Fortunately we put HSB in the other ponds so I will still have lots of those.

I knew that pond was pretty heavy with SMB based on my observations last fall feeding them for a month or so before winter. It was probably a mistake when we put the HSB in there, only adding to the likely over population problem. The weird part to me is that none of the other ponds had an observable problem. No fish floating on the banks.

This is one more situation about multiple ponds I have noticed before. They can have vastly different outcomes and situations despite being right beside each other. If I only had a single pond my observations and perhaps conclusions might have been different when something happened, compared to where I have multiple ponds and a certain situation only happens in one or two or them. They can be so close together, yet act so differently at times. Can be clarity, weed pressure, fish catchability, or a bunch of other things I can't think of at the moment. The fish kill is just another episode of how one pond can act completely different than an adjacent pond when seemingly exposed to similar conditions.

Glad to hear that it might not be a total blank slate!

If your family does catch some of the large HSB this fall from your other ponds, are you planning to re-stock a few back into the RES/SMB pond?

I would hate to see the entire current size class of RES and SMB all grow bigger without ANY predation. I think there is a chance they could consume all of the forage in their preferred consumption size.

(Just throwing out some wild speculations since you certainly know more about that topic than I do.)

Are you going to throw out some hand feed in that pond this fall? That might give you some rough visual sampling to observe the size and species of the fish that survived.

I will probably do some fall feeding again just to condition the fish for winter. The problem is we are hardly ever around. Since having the farm auction and my nephews doing the farming of our land, there is not much to keep us home. So we travel a lot. But I think I can put a feeder out there on a pallet, set it to just a small amount of supplemental feed, and maybe get back in time before it runs out. Already have the rest of the summer, fall and winter travel already planned out.

Since full retirement, the ponds have been kind of neglected. Too busy to fish any more.

I didn't hear about the farm auction.

As I recall, you had a lot of very expensive looking green "iron" at your place. I hope you got a good price for it - to finance a very busy retirement!

The clean up auction was May 15, 2021. We had decided to fully retire the fall before and sold about half the equipment by advertising it. The auction cleaned up what was left plus 50 years of tool and miscellaneous accumulation. We rented the farmland and farmstead (buildings and grain storage) out to my nephews.

So Carolynn and I have been foot loose and fancy free for over a year now. Heading for Bonaire, N.A. this weekend for a month of scuba diving. Then back for a couple weeks then to Moab, Utah and SW Arizona for off road vehicle trails for about six weeks (Polaris RZR pro 4 seat). Then home for a week or two then back to Bonaire the first part of December for the winter three months (for a lot more scuba diving - I do 150-200 dives a year) and back home next year in April. Put about 4,000 miles on a new Kawasaki KLX230SE dual purpose dirt bike on gravel and black top county roads the last couple months around locally. Carolynn saw I was having so much fun, we got her a Honda Trail 125 and she goes with me sometimes.

We don't let much grass grow under our feet. Speaking of grass, I think we could have hay baled our yard when we finally made it back this last spring. Enjoying retirement! I'm a teenager again! (only with more money and toys!). Hitting that deer with the motorcycle last December 6 slowed me down a bit, but I am managing around the remaining difficulties.

I'm only 2 hours from Moab. You may be driving within 3 miles of our home, if you come over on US 160 through Durango and then Colorado 184 from Mancos up to US 491 out west of Dolores.
Give a shout; I'll give you directions.
You could even bring some of those HSB youngsters. Haha.
Roger

You might even convince him to go scuba diving in your pond, do a survey of what you have in there.
Love to scuba dive but hadnt done it in a while, did some commercial diving back in the day, worked for a company out of Lafayette LA doing underwater construction and welding on offshore platforms after hurricane Andrew tore a bunch of them up in 93 I believe it was.

Snrub,
I’m with you on retirement, four wheeling, and dual sport motorcycles. A buddy and I just completed the Idaho and Wyoming BDRs. The plan is to pack in as much fun as we can,, until we can’t.

I am at the farm. The battle with pond scum continues. Bought a big skimming net, but no wind has the slime spread out. Hoping for wind.