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

Good news and bad news at the pond this morning. The good news is that the scum (algae) has gone away. I guess it got cool enough or it ran out of nutrients. It’s nice to see clear open water again.
The bad news is, FOUR otters on the pond. Just having a grand old time feasting on fish, frogs, and crawdads. I gave them a stern lecture. Hopefully they’ll leave. I guess I was crazy thinking I’d just have the one a few weeks ago and not see any more.
Ah! The problems of pond ownership. Haha!

Did the wise powers that be reintroduce otters to your area? I know they did in parts of Texas.

Yes, the Missouri Dept of Conservation brought them back. From what I’m hearing, they are providing traps to help control them now. That’s not official, as I would guess they aren’t admitting publicly what a mistake it is/was.

SetterGuy i was thinking about your algae problem while I battled mine. It seemed like one day a switch flipped and the algae just disappeared. It was like it ran out of nutrients and then self-destructed. I had bought some algaecide but then never got around to needing it. Water is clear as ever now! I even put some lawn fertilizer on and next day had downpour with runoff. I was afraid of kicking the algae into high gear or at least starting up the bloom again, NOTHING.

I finished cleaning up a summer's worth of raked algae off the shore and happily dumped a few hundred pounds of nutrients into the woods.

Hope you find a way to discourage the otters!!

Thanks CC. I guess once one comes in it must leave some kind of a scent trail. Four this time. After our discussion and they left, I ran the feeder. Fish seemed the same.
I guess I’m going to have to get some traps.
I was still seeing a very small amount of algae along the bank, but it’s 90% gone. I was just at the pond four days ago, and it was still pretty thick. We didn’t get this cool front until last night. Don’t know if that had anything to with it.

I went to pull up record fish in Texas. I saw that the largest Tiger Musky caught in Texas was only 9 pounds. Y'all need to be stocking some more TM!!
I think they would have plenty to eat in Lake Texoma or those other big impoundments full of bait fish. The YP record was also surprisingly skinny. Maybe it was a different variant of YP (Rio Grande YP?)
(I was curious what the record Pumpkinseed was and there was no record, does that mean there isn't any PS in Texas?)

Here was the link I found. I hope it is somewhat up to date?
Texas State Fishing Records

CC, here's the current records. TPWD fishing records

There are 4 categories in TX. Fly fishing private and public water, and conventional tackle private and public water.

Al,

Thanks for the link to the records.

I found it very interesting that Texas has categories for LMB/SMB hybrids and LMB/spotted bass hybrids.

How the heck did they identify a LMB/spotted bass hybrid without genetic testing?

Are LMB/SMB hybrids semi-common in Texas? I have never caught a black bass in a lake that had populations of both LMB and SMB where the fish did not clearly look like one or the other. (But perhaps I am just clueless!)

Thanks, Al. I've definitely got hybrid striped bass that would beat the 7.3 lb private lake record. Nothing remotely close to the 19.66 public record, though!

As for tiger musky, I think it would be difficult for them to survive a Texas summer. Looked into tech that would oxygenate below the thermocline in hopes of raising TM, but not all the bugs have been worked out quite yet.

Rod, the hybrid categories are fairly new, so I'm guessing they are tested by TPWD. I see a few hybrids on the Texas Fishing Forum on Ray Roberts and Ivie. Texoma should have a great LMB/SMB hybrid in it, so I'm surprised it doesn't have more records.

After spraying Stingray a few times and Diquat a few times on the watermeal in the pond I threw in the towel and treated it today with enough Fluridone to achieve the 90 ppb rate in the whole pond. Time will tell. The pond is low enough that some of the APW is up out of the water. Any in the pond proper is a goner. The Curly Leaf Pondweed is a goner too. Lets see if the 2 Spatterdock plants that are trying to get a start get whacked too.

Back at the pond today. No evidence of any living otters.
There’s a film on the water, but most of the algae is still gone.
Fish are still really getting after the food when the feeder goes off. Lots and lots of small GSH still in evidence. Not seeing any additional HSB. I hope I didn’t catch the only survivor from stocking two years ago.
Edit. Noticed a few big swirls out near the middle of the pond. I’m thinking there’s a few HSB still out there.
Pretty peaceful morning.

Beautiful morning pic, SetterGuy!

I hope what is going on beneath the surface of the pond is as favorable.

That is a beautiful fall morning pic Setterguy!
My water is getting clearer again as it does every fall, being able to see fish and structure much deeper then I can thru most of the summer.

I hope so too! Couldn’t find a turtle this morning. Could be first time in 8 years they haven’t been out there. May have been otter casualties. But we only saw the otters eating fish, and found partially eaten crawdads.

Setter
Coons also kill a lot of turtles especially when they leave water to breed or change lakes…. We find a lot of shells

Nice picture Jeff, there is just something about looking across a pond.

I've been seeing the smaller LMB eating pellets for a while now, but I was really happy today to see at least two of the original stocked LMB eating them. I think next year I'll get some feed more for them.

Seems like when they start eating pellets they train the rest of them pretty fast to take advantage of the slow moving food. LMB that is.

Made it home in one piece from vacation in sunny Florida. We spent 10 days in Pensacola Beach. Weather was perfect.
Unpacked the truck, spent most of Friday resting up from the drive. Saturday did a few chores in the victory garden, placed
four loader buckets full of limestone cobble on the pond dam, and then took Mrs. Augie out there to see if I could get her
on one of the HSB.

Those fish haven't been super easy to catch on artificials, and using nightcrawlers results in catching a lot of BG/HBG/RES,
so we sacrificed an old pair of pantyhose to use as a wrapper for Optimal Hand Throw pellets. I rigged a smallish casting
bubble at the end of the mainline, then used a short piece of Berkely Vanish to a #1 Owner circle hook on the terminal end.
Hook a corner of the pantyhose bit, place a pellet, then hook up the other four corners. Simple and effective.




She caught two of them and I put both of them to the knife.
This one measured 19.75" and weighed in at 3.66lb, which is a bit shy of what the Wr chart I'm using says it should have weighed.
The other was 19.5" and 3.44lb. Both fish had a ridiculous amount of belly fat so I'm a bit perplexed by the Wr results.
I was also slightly surprised by the gut content of these fish. It's been three weeks since they got any pellets, and with the numbers
of small BG/HBG/RES/YP in the pond I expected to find their gullets full of fish. What I found was gullets full of crayfish.
My theory is these pellet munchers are too lazy to chase fish so they're going for the slow moving mudbugs instead.




After the 2nd HSB was landed I switched her over to nightcrawlers just to get an idea of how the panfish are doing.
She caught several nice RES, one eater (7"-9") BG, and this one that measured 9.5" and weighed .74lb, which is right at 100% Wr
according to the chart. I wouldn't have killed this one, but it was hooked a bit deep and I figured it would croak anyway so it went
into the butcher bucket with the HSB.

Wife broke the pond record today. 21” (was a little over that) 3.57 pounds.

She did have help.

Great job SetterGuy.

I definitely like kid/fish pictures when the fish is > more than 50% of the height of the child!

anthropic any time the fish mostly stop biting, it raises my otter suspicions.

Nice SMB, SetterGuy!!!!

I think I’ve still got one or two otters. Found a few tracks around the edges of the pond. Not showing up during the day any longer. I ordered two traps that will hopefully be in soon.