Yesterday I talked with some of the folks who were pumping water into my forage pond. They love fishing and eating fish, so were very interested in what was going on.
Honestly, I didn't fully appreciate the amount of knowledge Pond Boss has passed along. They liked panfish, particularly crappie, and had recently stocked a pond with a mix of bluegill and crappie. No bass, as they wanted no competition for those white filets! This is likely gonna cause some problems with overpopulation, but that's not on their radar. Neither is water chemistry.
When they asked to fish at my place, they were shocked that I said to harvest BG smaller than 9 inches, rather than larger. Ditto with 14 inch LMB. A keeper was a big fish, not a smaller one, didn't I know that??? They agreed to abide by my rules, but found them bizarre.
The whole deal gave me new perspective on how much I've learned from PB. There was a time when I too would have kept the bigguns & thrown back the little guys, confident that the little uns would grow to replace the bigguns. LMB were either infinite in numbers -- take out as many as you like! -- or, later, strict catch & release was necessary. Harvesting the smaller bass while returning the large fish was just plain weird. Clear water was cleaner & better, of course. As for alkalinity, what the heck was that?
So, PB, Bob Lusk, and my fellow pondmeisters, keep up the good work. We are better stewards with more knowledge, and there's lots of folks out there who could benefit!
About 100 years ago, I was at the County NRCS office to talk to them about how to build a pond. The waiting area had a new magazine called Pond Boss. They said I could have it. BTW, that was in the days when I already knew everything I needed to. I read it and it had a lot of stuff that I had never considered. It only had about 15 pages. Not sure it was in color. It said expect a coming website and forum. I called and talked to Lusk and got a subscription. He also said he would call me when the website and forum went live. He did and the hook was set. A guy named Cody showed up about the time I did and talked about things, new to me, about balanced water. I figured that was BS and found out the hard and expensive way that Bill was right. Early members were me, Cody, Cecil Baird and a bunch of Louisiana Cajuns.
Everything I know, learned and sometimes have either forgotten or ignored has come from here or the PB mag and this site.
Last edited by Dave Davidson1; 03/25/2305:39 AM.
It's not about the fish. It's about the pond. Take care of the pond and the fish will be fine. PB subscriber since before it was in color.
Without a sense of urgency, Nothing ever gets done.
Boy, if I say "sic em", you'd better look for something to bite. Sam Shelley Rancher and Farmer Muleshoe Texas 1892-1985 RIP
When we built our first pond, I went looking for pertinent info and reading material on-line. I found a site called Bassresource.com that had some good articles about pond management, all of which seemed to be written by some guy named Bob Lusk and reprinted from a magazine named Pond Boss. ( I still remember his advice "Harvest the garden.") That got me started, and I've been wasting spending time here ever since. Along with a lot of fish harvesting (and eating).
"Live like you'll die tomorrow, but manage your grass like you'll live forever." -S. M. Stirling
I remember finding some kind of 'early' forum type set-up by the state of Mississippi.
Some poster asked a question, and some guy named "Cody" told him if he really wanted answers, to come over to Pond Boss.
That was 20 years ago.
Excerpt from Robert Crais' "The Monkey's Raincoat:" "She took another microscopic bite of her sandwich, then pushed it away. Maybe she absorbed nutrients from her surroundings."
I cannot tell you how many folks I have referred to Pond Boss - I am an avid hunter and on several hunting forum where pond questions/threads come up and I always suggest they look at this site and the magazine - great resource for sure
There are many members that also heavily manage their properties for wildlife. I have found them to be an excellent resource as I have starting managing the habitat on my property.
I also go to the hunting forums. However, I "know" the people on Pond Boss much better and we have seem to have very few blowhards or braggarts. I trust PB advice a little more as a consequence.
I'm hoping small(er) towns will make a comeback what with communications tech & ability to work from home. Sadly, cities are in decline due to increased crime, high taxes & cost of living, bad schools, and general disorder. Healthy children need to connect with the outdoors, including outdoor pets & activities such as fishing!
I'm hoping small(er) towns will make a comeback what with communications tech & ability to work from home. Sadly, cities are in decline due to increased crime, high taxes & cost of living, bad schools, and general disorder. Healthy children need to connect with the outdoors, including outdoor pets & activities such as fishing!
Unfortunately I dont see them gaining much advantage in the near future, with the giant stores and companies putting pretty much all small mom and pop stores out of business, even down to filling stations, if you dont have an 18 pump filling stations you are gonna be out of business soon. You have Dollar stores and Caseys trying to cater to smaller communities but the frustrating part is the doggone small town consumer, instead of patronizing these smaller entities, most of them will drive 5 miles to buy gas for 2 cents less, or order crap from giant online sellers such as Amazon instead of patronizing their local guy because they can buy window cleaner for 20cents less per bottle shipped to their house, and all their tax monies went to some distant state. Now we have UPS and Fedex drivers tearing up and down county roads and very little tax money coming into the community from it.
Ok I will get off my pedestal now, rant over.
All the really good ideas I've ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.
Our small towns (southern Kansas) are also still losing population.
One factor in my area is that the average farm size is increasing due to economies of scale. Also, some of the farm families sell out and leave when they have three children and none of them want to stay and continue the "family business".
The worldwide trend has been toward urbanization, but now many cities are experiencing population loss due to crime, taxes, prices, etc. And there has been a general movement out of states dominated by one or two large cities, such as New York, Illinois, and California. I guess suburbs are benefiting the most so far, but would love to see towns make a comeback!
Anthropic, I see the changes as people have migrated away from the huddled masses to less populous places. Texas real estate has gotten nuts.
I have my home, 2 rent houses, and my rural 133 acre property. My home phone rings continually and my mail box gets something almost daily regarding my real estate.
I’m going to totally refurbish one rent house and sell it. It will go for about 4 to 5 times what we paid for it 30 years ago. Of course, due to inflation, the refurb will also be expensive. And, I’ll have to recapture the depreciation and pay some nasty taxes on the gain. I’m having some cabinet doors replaced. That now takes 60+ days. $200 each for new cabinet drawers and or drawers.
Last edited by Dave Davidson1; 04/14/2307:40 PM.
It's not about the fish. It's about the pond. Take care of the pond and the fish will be fine. PB subscriber since before it was in color.
Without a sense of urgency, Nothing ever gets done.
Boy, if I say "sic em", you'd better look for something to bite. Sam Shelley Rancher and Farmer Muleshoe Texas 1892-1985 RIP
Dave, it's wonderful that you already had real estate before the latest Texas boom! I've had offers on my little place, but they are absurdly low, like one-third of what I paid for the pre-pond raw land in 2015! Guess it's like those come ons from online Nigerian princes, it only takes one naive person in a thousand to make a scam worthwhile.