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

Neighbor has 13 horses that are on my place and enjoying themselves. I tried to run them off yesterday and back home but they got in the heavy brush and disappeared. They tear up a corn deer feeder pretty quickly. She is trying to catch them but my place is thick oaks and can’t see 50 feet in any direction. I gave up and headed back to the big city.

You just think horse people are crazy, until you marry one.

My wife had two horses at one time.

Talk about a light, airy feeling in your wallet.....

Sounds like you need someone else on a horse that knows how to throw a rope........

What's the saying? Good fences make good neighbors?

And the corollary - Good neighbors make good fences.

Went down to the pond to see if had started to thaw yet. Temperature was up to 42 today. There was only about 6 inches of open water around the edge of the island. Other than that was still froze solid.

What causes these fractures in the ice? Read one article that said it was Gas holes.
Gas holes are created by a persistent source of gas from rotting vegetation under the lake bottom. The rising bubbles drag up water from a few feet below the surface. This water is usually a couple or three degrees above freezing. The steady flow of above freezing water melts out a bell shaped cavity in the ice. In cold weather there is often just a small hole in the roof of the cavity to let the gas out.

If it actually opened up the ice, it must have froze back. It was still above freezing when I took this picture.

Or water on top of the ice looking for a way to get beneath the ice.

Ice fishing. 2 pounder recent stocking 1 month ago.only bugs in it...takes a while to switch to minnows and sunfish.

TinyLake - Very nice fish to be catching during winter ice cover. Good management. All those bug bodies look to me to be water boatmen or possibly back swimmers both very similar looking especially when in a fish stomach. .

How thick was the ice on your pond?

Hi Bill thanks, I'm thinking waterboatmen because of the size. They are finicky eaters and when we are sight fishing they either come in like torpedoes and devour or they come in and look and swim away..real tricky to catch. I am trying to catch some that we released in the spring...those ones are eating sunfish now so at some point they are figuring out that they need to switch to a larger protein based diet to make it. Ive got a pretty good handle on how I'd stock now and will post my results later. Most encouraging is that 2 months in to ice they are still 2w to 14 feet down.at the bottom and taking the bait.

Pond Ice thickness in your Ontario location?

14 inches today, trout at all depths . I've been aerating for about 1.5 months to keep a hole open. 4 inches of snow on top and lots of light getting thru. Green living weeds on the bottom Still.
Haven't checked DO ...still liveable at 14 feet so it must be good so far. No gas smell from the holes or open aerator hole. We still have 2.5 months or 3 of ice cover coming up tho.

Meant to say my fences aren’t great.

A neighbor fished my pond Sunday. 3" ice. Yellow Perch, Rainbow Trout, Hybrid Crappie and a single 10" Hybrid Striped Bass. The majority of the fish were within a foot or two of the bottom, but came up as far as 5' off the bottom to nail a jigging rapala. 14' of water and my pond is 3'-4' low....... It was -2°F this morning, and the last two days it never climbed above 15°F, so I expect more ice to be on the pond now.

Our ice here in MO is about 4 to 5 inches thick, I didn't have time to ice fish but walking around on the ice and seen some otter sign where they come up out of the water in the ground and then come out on top of the ice to eat the fish they caught, fish heads and scales laying around, I put out a few traps in some strategic places, see if I have any luck, I changed my strategy up a bit on my muskrats and been catching them pretty steady, even a couple from under the ice.

Pond just thawed out on Friday here in NC Oklahoma when we hit 60 degrees and promptly froze back up yesterday when the Siberian front came through. Over 2 Inches of snow today with a high of about 22, will be down to 4 tonight. Fortunately we don't have 30 MPH wind to go with it like usual.

Temps are staying in the 40’s here.

My car sadly said -10 degrees this morning.

We are at around zero or slightly below this morning but negative teens windchill and not supposed to get out of the teens actual temps today, good time for some shop work.
Needing to get some business tax filing glitches figured out with the IRS while the weather is bad but not sure if its a good day to be calling irs agents today or not, they may be a little moody.

I'm likely less than a 2hr drive from you. We had that 60 degree day but it didn't open up any water. Last couple of days have been bitter cold with some temps in the negatives. I should go down to the pond and see how thick the ice is but probably won't until the weekend. Worries me with the drought we've had, it's as low as anyone has ever seen it.

We had a low of 6 today and I had about 3 inches of snow over the ice on the pond this morning, We had a high of 47 today and it's just about gone. The ice was thick enough that several deer walked across it yesterday. I don't think it's over 4 inches thick so it may be gone again by the end of the week.

I know I'm spoiled but I'm ready for Spring!! I would be miserable in the North where they deal with months of ice/snow.