Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking Southern MB ponds

i have acquired 80 acres in Southern MB with gravel and 2 current ponds that are total 3 acres and depth to 50 feet. Currently they are unstocked with a high turtle, leech, and crayfish population, with no aeration or pond management practice in place, and only rocks for structure, with 1/3 of shoreline being tall reeds.

i would like to establish a smallmouth fishery- aeration, stocking, etc. looking for guidance for overall ecosystem.

will i be able to manage the turtle and leech population with adequate stocking?

aeration? year round in this climate ?

Thanks,

Dan

Howdy and welcome, Dan.

I now know that MB is the abbreviation for Manitoba.

You're way North and way deeper that my experience, but you have an interesting situation. I may be able to ask some questions whose answers may help those better equipped to advise you. (Calling Dr. Perca.)

I think SMB will readily eat leeches. Most of the old timers here don't worry much about turtles. What species are they?

Are the two ponds filled by surface water or flow through ground water (like gravel pits). That's likely to make a difference. I would love to know what your dissolved oxygen profiles vs depth looks like in the heart of Winter. How thick do you think the ice will get, and how long a period are the ponds likely to be frozen over?

Thanks for responding!

The ponds are max depth 50 feet with average of 25 feet, and ice typically will cover to 24 inches deep or a couple feet more in a severe winter. we do get to -30 C on a few days on occasion. Ice over is typically 5 months.

Turtles are painted, i believe. Need to validate.

Ponds are groundwater filled. Very high groundwater- nearly at the surface. In this area wells are 19 feet deep groundwater well and as they removed the gravel they had to pump the ponds and actually the nearby neighbor's well went dry.

Need to have someone's help establishing a Dissolved Oxygen profile. Very willing to add aeration.

SMB do very well in this region in many of the lakes to the east along the border and to the north. i love to fly fish but as i am way too busy i never get

There are two ponds divided by an earthen barrier. The smaller one is shallower and i will likely deepen by removing more gravel with a long reach excavator without pumping it down.

Deeply appreciate insight to understand the right questions.

thanks,

Welcome to Pond Boss!

If you pick smallmouth bass as your predator, you will also need forage fish for them. Preferably, several different species.

Yellow perch is a good option to go with SMB. Also need something in the minnow size, that does well in your particular area. You might search through some of the old threads on SMB ponds. There are some from the northern U.S., and even some from Canada.

As to aeration, I am not sure you need it much? Cold water is capable of holding much more dissolved oxygen than warm water.

I sometimes get to fish with my cousins at their cabin on a nice lake in southern Ontario. It is south of your property, but sometimes has ice in the shallower portions of the lake that is 5-6' thick. That seems (to me) too thick for the plants to be able to produce some oxygen throughout the winter, yet somehow they do. My cousins have never observed a fish kill (that they know of).

Maybe you could run a few very shallow diffusers during the winter beside your dock and in some other areas just to keep a tiny portion of the lake ice free. (They do have to rebuild or repair their dock every 3-4 years, depending on how the ice breaks up on the lake.)

Their lake has SMB, YP, rock bass, walleye, some lake trout, and several species of minnow type fish. With all of those consumers - the lake still has leeches! When we swim in the summer, the adults that swim out to the deepwater floating dock or paddle board around the lake typically do not get any leeches. The small children that splash around in the shallow sandy water do get leeches.

How deep is your shallower pond? If it does have a couple of deep spots, you may not need to deepen it. Of course, if it has too much shallow water that it is choked with plants and is unfishable, then that is a different situation.

How old are your ponds? Did the gravel operations recently cease? Is 1/3 of the shoreline tall reeds in both ponds? In that case, you may not need to deepen the ponds, but rather just steepen the profile of your pond slopes. You might determine what is the average depth that no longer supports abundant plants, and try to steepen some parts of the pond so the profile quickly goes from shore to that depth. There will be some angle of repose, that is the maximum steepness that the gravel will remain stacked.

If you go that route (a lot of work), I would not steepen the whole shoreline. Having some heavy cover for your forage fish, and having some good oxygen production during winter are both big benefits.

Good luck on your upcoming pond projects!

Thanks for responding!

The ponds are max depth 50 feet with average of 25 feet, and ice typically will cover to 24 inches deep or a couple feet more in a severe winter. we do get to -30 C on a few days on occasion. Ice over is typically 5 months.

Turtles are painted, i believe. Need to validate.

Ponds are groundwater filled. Very high groundwater- nearly at the surface. In this area wells are 19 feet deep groundwater well and as they removed the gravel they had to pump the ponds and actually the nearby neighbor's well went dry.

Need to have someone's help establishing a Dissolved Oxygen profile. Very willing to add aeration.

SMB do very well in this region in many of the lakes to the east along the border and to the north. i love to fly fish but as i am way too busy i never get

There are two ponds divided by an earthen barrier. The smaller one is shallower and i will likely deepen by removing more gravel with a long reach excavator without pumping it down.

Deeply appreciate insight to understand the right questions.

thanks,

very helpful- thanks. smaller pond is currently 10-25 feet deep currently. Ponds were pumped out and gravel removed in 2014.

Surface area of small and large pond?
Are you living at these ponds?
Are you able to remove some snow from the small pond with a RTV , pick up or similar device?
Do you have access to some forage fish from other local waters?
Are you planning to get the SMB from local waters?

Surface area about 3 acres. 2ac in larger, 1ac in smaller. (Larger pond 2ac 50 feet with average of 25 feet; 1ac 10-25ft)

Will be living there part time - weekemds. Will have someone there all the time

Could remove snow from surface.

Asking MB fisheries to understand how i could access forage or SMB to stock

Do the ponds have any habitat structure?

FWIW, max depth on rocking piston pumps is placing the diffuser at 30' water depth. Other compressors have a shallower max depth.

Winter aeration might all depend on the BOD of the pond during the winter, and while an O2 profile might show there is enough O2 now, adding fish will change that profile.

I know Bill said you may not need it, I think it all depends on the ice. IF the ice forms, then it gets snow on it before you can shovel it off and the ice gets milky white, then that might be enough to limit sunlight penetration through the ice. No sunlight means no phytoplankton making O2 during the winter. 2" snow and 2" cloudy ice is enough to limit sunlight penetration.

helpful-
only current structure is rocks- will need to add some.

Just my thoughts here, but if I were you, I would try to remain under the radar, so to speak, with contacting any provincial 'authorities' about whether or not you can stock SMB or not.

We do have a PB member from Saskatchewan, and I believe he learned he was only 'allowed' to stock Yellow Perch in his body of water.

To what Sunil said ++++++
Are there Fish selling farms within several hours driving distance where you can buy some stocker fish? What species do they have for sale. link to them?

Are you able to locally catch sport fish such as SMB and or YP and also set fish traps to catch forage fish for transfer into your waters? If you are not in a hurry for being able to catch quality sized SMB,,,, It is possible you could add several subadult or small adult fish and allow them to spawn to produce young of year (YOY) for then populating the ponds.

Do a google search for pondboss and member DonoBBD He is south of you if I recall closer to London but has a pond that allows for reproduction of species that rarely reproduce in ponds due to having moving water and lots of rocky substrate that simulate stream conditions. His success may be also from the water quality and water temperature but no one really knows all the variables that lead to success.

He has emerald shiners which do well for him. He may be able to guide you on sourcing both the forage options and the predators. In the US we have options for SHIPPING (sorry not fishing typo) large quantity of small shiners and also large quantity of desired species of crayfish but I do not know if these sales are allowed to customers in Canada.

There may be an advantage to using the excavator to create underwater humps or 'fish lanes' to add contour which gives better places for fish to thrive, but I'm not sure you need more depth. If you want to make the 2nd pond larger and give more shallow areas for spawning and recreation that would make sense. But for most of us, having a deep water zone that is 12-15 feet is plenty in northern lakes. I'm not sure there is any advantage to purposely taking a 18-20' pond and making it 30-40 feet deep unless you want to harvest the gravel anyway. That extra 20 feet of depth is often considered 'dead water' as you usually do not try to aerate the depths between 20' and 50' or more.

If you have access to an excavator now is the time to consider adding an 'upstream' forage pond which can also act as a silt catcher if you have run off events. The forage fond can be small but is hugely valuable for creating a predator free area where you can experiment with different types of forage and can easily gauge your populations, you can more easily watch them feed, you can feed train YP there if you desire, you can seine the forage pond more easily if you create it with a flat bottom and gently sloped entry zone on one side. You can create a pipe outlet into one of your other ponds if you want to put all the forage in that pond at once or if you just want to add a little.

If you decide you want to simulate stream conditions to encourage reproduction for stream sourced shiners or even to try to get walleye reproduction that could be added by way of waterfall fountains which could include moving water through the forage pond as well.

Before me offering suggestions it would be helpful to have more information.
1. What are your ultimate goals for these ponds??. Are you just looking for options for possible fishery combinations in these ponds? Or have you decided that SMB are your main fishery goal and now how to grow them? Being in MB with the potential water quality in your gravel pit ponds would trout be a preferred option for you? Would trout be an option as a constant bonus fish or as a worst case option use them as put and take to be periodically added?.
2. How long have you owned these ponds?
3. How much experience do you have in pond/lake management or ownership or fish growing experience?
4. Do you have water clarity measurements for these ponds? Do you know what a secchi disk is?
5. Determine the fish species availability (sold or bucket stocked) of your region as fish species that are available for potential stockings into your ponds and then our help would be more useful.