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

I've found that the average trick-or-treater prefers Purina Aquamax, but I'm sure the Optimal fans will disagree.

I tried some the other day after returning home from the pond. Was a little hungry, grabbed some chips to tide me over until supper and cleaned up the cool ranch off my finger tips so it wouldn't go to waste.


The one time I didn't wash my hands upon returning home...


Cool ranch and Optimal BG/Winter are not a good combination just in case anybody was curious....

Boon have my sympathy , can't have a snack after feeding your fish, open a bottled drink, Adult or otherwise and you can smell dead fish with every swig ! After 4 (?? I believe 4 years of hand feeding??) years of hand feeding and fighting with oily fingers and "Flavor Crystals" ( 1st year was the TSC Cheap stuff, not catfish but supposedly Game Fish ) , can assure you Optimal definitely sticks to fingers best by far , hands down (Pun intended) . Certainly hope Optimal sticks to Fish ribs as well as it does Human fingers. Finally realized I needed one time use vinyl gloves (all of my leather gloves started stinking like dead fish ) , Boon , Feed fish , remove vinyl glove and enjoy snacks , wife doesn't complain of dead fish smell when you get home. Side benefit , Trick or Treaters don't complain of smell of Dead Fish candy , if you remove vinyl glove , before handing out candies.

I hand feed using an empty (Betty Crocker !) cake icing container. They hold about 2 measuring cups, and have a lid in case you want to seal them.

No fish oil smell on my hands.

(Almost) the exact same way Prime Minister Abe of Japan feeds his koi.

I also hand feed. My age, shoulder & elbow limit the amount & distance I can throw a 28 ounce can of feed. I found a dog ball launcher & ball for about $5. Duke's Dog Toy Ball Launcher, blue plastic, I had to use the magic fix all duct tape to cover the holes, shaped somewhat like a Jai Aalii cesta, holds about a quarter of the 28 oz. can.

Easy & stress free to throw. With little effort, I can get 40-50 feet. The part I like the most, it is easy to spread the pellets out over a greater area. Some fish appear to be more comfortable eating 40 feet from the bank others right at the bank is fine, still other groups hang out at the far left or right. The smaller fish don't have to get into the scrum for food. With the food spread out the turtles, TGC, & large TP get a bit less. All seems to work well.

Fed at the neighborhood pond today. Water temp was around 59 degrees.

Bluegill and LMB were waiting for feed, and took to it aggressively, and then slowed down to lazy feeding. Catfish showed up and fed well.

I'm seeing at least two different kinds of fish, I feel, that are hitting feed, but I can't tell what they are.

ALSO: The feed that sinks get's taken immediately.

I spread 12 bales of hay and a bunch of rye gras around the dam on my pond. The construction was just complete, and we have some very heavy rains in the forecast (Another hurricane). I'm hoping the hay will help the dam from the inevitable erosion until the grass roots in and holds everything together. Fingers crossed!

Bradley,

You might look at some "silt fence" if you still have some more big rains coming.

You can probably find it in your area for $0.25-0.30 per lineal foot. In a clean, flat line across the face of your dam it can be installed very quickly. If you slow the velocity of the water running down the slope, you will significantly reduce the amount of erosion it can cause.

Good luck on filling up your pond with GENTLE rains!

Bradley,

Not an expert here but speaking from personal experience. Rod is spot on with his recommendations with the silt fence. My pond was completed in the fall like yours. I spread Bermuda hay (large round bales) around all of my pond banks in significant amounts and still had major erosion issues. I had to use heavy equipment to repair the damage. Wish I would have been on the forum and received this advise when I was in the beginning stages.

As always there are some great resources here.

The old saying of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure goes a long ways in pond management as well.

Ambient temps in W.PA. are about 47/48; water temperature at my neighborhood pond was 52/53ish.

I didn't see any fish gathering. While I was soaking some Optimal Bluegill, Bass, and Handthrow feed, I threw out some Starter (of which about 20% sinks right away) I immediately saw some bluegill taking the sinking feed along with some smaller LMB.

Once I threw out some soaked mix of O.Bluegill and Bass, the sinking pellets were immediately hit by bluegill and some smaller LMB.

Then the Golden Shiner Brigade showed up and started hitting some of the surface feed.

After about 10 minutes or so, some of the floating feed started getting hit, and the action steadily picked up.

I smelled the presence of some catfish but couldn't actually see any.

Tomorrow looks to be a bit warmer, so I think I'll be able to pull off a feed then also.

Crazy getting to feed in mid-November! Good for the soul.

Sunil, I’m still feeding. Yesterday, I went a mile back to my GSF pond and tossed pellets. They start boiling the water when they hear the 4 wheeler coming.

It’s probably a bit late now, but to keep brushy crap off the dam I have a pullbear lever for yanking out small trees before the roots get too big. It is a good workout, and there is something satisfying about popping them up. Willows don’t work so well with it, as they have the longest, stringiest roots of them all. Those get hit with glyphosate. Trees that get too large get sawn off and immediately hit with a paintbrush of concentrated roundup or stump killer before they can dry. Just mowing them off allows the roots to just get super huge and harder to kill.

When it comes to brush hogging the dam, I have filled tires to help, load up the front bucket with rocks, keep the bucket as low as possible, stay in low, and back down carefully. If I start to slide at all, I would drop the bucket, but i haven’t needed to. My dam is steep enough where I cannot mow side to side. Needless to say my seat has a crease in it from holding on with my cheeks.

What scares me more is mowing the cut uphill from the pond which is as steep as the dam. I just got that done yesterday for the very first time in 15 years. Vegetation wasn’t growing well on it, so it was mostly mud and stone until recently. I tried a few years ago and immediately started sliding down on a platter of mud and stone towards the water. I dropped the deck and the bucket and stopped sliding. I had to leave the tractor there for a few weeks for it to dry enough and drop brush down for traction. There is finally enough vegetation on it, mainly in the form of pussy willows, so it went much better.

On site yesterday investing some recent bird activity and took the time to throw a little food in. FHM, GSH were the first to arrive. I did see a bit of light feeding from what I assume are BG/YP as well on the floating food and a few flashes below the surface probably picking of the forage.

Oh, if you don’t have ag tires and are worried about traction, see if you can find GOOD chains. I have cheap chains, but they don’t wrap the tires like they should and easily come off. Good chains are pricey, but totally worth it!
When I had access to a clunker of a tractor with only rear drive, I would use some heavy chains on it, and was amazed at how it could still pull through some terrible conditions.

Good advice liquidsquid.

I have never seen chains of a tractor! However, I have stuck a small (32 hp) 4WD tractor twice in the mud while trying to bush hog the edges of my marshy areas.

Both times when I was getting pulled out, I could hear the massive suction on the sidewalls of the tractor tires finally break as the tractor got back on top of the ground.

I wonder if one way the chains help is to prevent all of the suction when the tractor tires do deeply sink into saturated ground?

They not only help break suction, they multiply traction over just where there is weight, so they don’t just dig at the bottom. If you need to put lumber in front of the tires to pop out of a rut, no problem with chains. Really hard to do without. But the tractor needs the HP and a darned low gear to lift itself out of a hole.

Yep, and it doesn’t hurt to try to get something like a big flat rock under the tire.

I found out that, on 4WD, all four can be slipping and digging bigger holes.

An electric winch can be time saving and pucker saving when using a tractor in sketchy conditions as you are describing. Even an inexpensive Harbor Freight winch can give you loads of confidence. Plan ahead, scoping out what your anchor point might be before you get into a predicament.
I've pulled my Honda quad out of the pond mire with my tractor and had neighborly assistance with my Tundra to free the same tractor form the pond muck later. A $150 winch would have solved either of these "stucks".

I've used a 1,500# winch on the front of an ATV that was nosed into a tree for a solid anchor point to help guide a 65 hp tractor away from a pond when I moved forward. The front tires (even in 4wd) wanted to slide sideways into the pond and the winch helped me get the tractor pointed up away from the water.

It's been since 11/16 that I was last at my neighborhood pond.

I still haven't physically been down there, but driving to work today, with the light snowfall we had overnight, there's at least a skim coat of ice on the pond as the surface is snow covered.

Panels installed, 1kw for my aerators.

Nice!

Is your cell phone game camera set up for big game, or is it installed to catch fish killers of either the four-legged or two-legged variety?

Its for big game and anything that crosses in front of it actually... I have 6 cell cams that send pics from various places on my property...one of them is to alert me to otters entering through my little creek. Best investment ever!

I also bought 1000 yards of 100 pound monofilament to string across the lake in areas to see if that keeps the birds of prey out.

Yep, I was wondering if you did set up an "otter cam".

Much easier to trap out one or two pioneers, rather than several families of otters!