Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Looks like the otters cleaned me out

Fished early this morning. Fishing was pretty good, but only one SMB of any size. The otters definitely took the larger ones, but the good news is that there appears to be a lot of smaller SMB still here. We caught 5 yesterday and 6 today. All about this size.

Caught a fair amount of YP also. All about this size

Sorry about the d*mn otters!

Looking at the pictures, I suspect you DID NOT have to say "Smile!" before taking the shots. Rather, the fish catching and quality family time were more than adequate to generate the smiles!

Sorry about the otter problem, makes my blood boil that we had people dumb enough to bring them back, their extinction woulda been the best news ever.
That being said, how do you catch the YP? I put some in my pond but have never caught any yet, worms on a hook is a waste of time for me, too many BG, cant keep a worm in the water long enough for anything else to have a chance.

Have you ever tried ice fishing for your YP? You might have to drag your jon boat out on the ice if it is not thick enough for you to fish safely in Misery?

Have your tried getting your worms down to the bottom in deeper water when fishing during warmer weather? That might get you into territory with more YP and fewer BG.

Finally, have you tried fishing for YP during the first BG spawn. That might be your best chance of having the fish separated as much as possible in your pond.

Last winter we had minimal freezing, only a day or so that we could even get out on the ice, I have not tried the deep fishing thing, should I try around structure or open water?

The BG spawn thing I think is out of the question, these darn things spawn all summer, and they are everywhere all the time, I have one cove with some semi shallow water, (most of my pond is super deep with some pretty steep banks) but in that cove there are a ton of BG beds that you can see under the water and there are BG on it all summer, from mid May, all thru summer, I dont know if they take turns on the same bed or whats going on,, may be some swingers in that cove. I can throw some food out and they will ease up to the surface to grab a few pellets then go back on their beds. I have found a few other spots where they have some spawning beds.

I have a ton of them that stay around the feeder all summer too, Bg that is, but the feeder is a couple hundred yds from where the beds are so I toss some pellets out for the fish that dont hang out right under the feeder whenever I come by. you can see the water moving when I come driving up to them, following me along the dam to get their feed.

Agreed gehajake...."Oh but the fish eating otters are sooo cute"....lol....smh

btw....the people in Denver voted for bringing back the wolf in Colorado....of course the people in Denver don't have to deal with them....the rural areas...farmers, ranchers, hunters of Colorado voted against the wolves being re-introduced. The wolves will begin being introduced in areas far away from Denver and the bigger cities in next 8 weeks.

We’ve worked hard to try and get rid of the HBG I introduced seven years ago. We still catch some, but not many. They did reproduce, but not as bad as I originally thought. So now YP is the biggest part of my fish population. We still have a lot of golden shiners, but they don’t go after minnows. Which is how we are catching most of our YP.

That young man is super happy!!!! Great report.