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

We could stand a little rain but no Tu..floater. There been some rough ones this spring

Had a setback, otters bore beside my culvert and blew out my dam. I was there the day before they did it and I noticed some small mink and muskrat holes on the backside of the dam beside the culvert..taking note to Take care of that in the spring. I had bagged 7 otters so far this fall winter spring but knew there were a few more transitting the lake..finding trout and sunfish heads. Anyway I went home and often check my trail cam I have on the dam and we were having a fresh snow and I could see a trail being beaten from front to back so I knew it was otters ..it was tight to the cam so I could see the trail but didn't catch the otters on cam but it was evident the next morning when I lost 3 feet of water and the otters has fresh holes burrowed all around the dam and shore...amazing how fast they tunneled actually. I bagged 3 more in those holes in the next few days.

My lake doesn't flow into anything so I check for loss of trout, found 2 and saved one, lost a bunch of tiny sunfish so no big deal. I rebuilt the dam adding another 20 feet of culvert with bentonite in certain areas. I've also added chainlink fence to the dam face and will to the same on the backside. They won't get through that.

I still had lots of water and I'm catching some 3 pound rainbows, just topped up the lake and added more brookies and rbt. I haven't seen any otters since, bagged 7 beavers, but I'm sure it's a letter of time before more show up .but I have a plan! I'm building my spawning stream and I'll add natural channels that the otters will love...set with connibears.

I did catch a rbt and I always check stomach contents...this one had snails in it, I've also found caddisflies, sunfish and waterboatmen as well as giant waterbugs.

I have a otter problem in my 3+ acre bass pond in Pa. The pond is 20+ years old and produced some 5 lbs bass years back. We always release the big fish. But now 3lbs would be considered big. A Pa Game warden came on the property about another issue. He liked the pond and ask permission to walk around it. After his walk around he ask me how are my fish doing ? I told him its hard to catch a large bass but their in there. He replied ! Sorry to say they are not in the pond anymore. You have signs of otters all around your pond. Than he proceeded to tell me, its going to be challenging becuse you need to follow the Pa, laws on trapping them.
I ordered 2, 280 and because of the eagles and cranes, blue herring ! I put a bait fish in the middle of a 16 X 36 inch plastic drum. Traps are set into both sided with 2 inch pvc pipe two foot long to rest on the bottom 3 feet of water.
On day two I had one 16 inch wide about 20 lbs and a 10 lbs snapping turtle. Based on what I read on this site I can have 100 + turtles in my pond. There is a natural 100 acre swamp 1/4 mile away and its all flatland. Pasture. I read many people say the turtles are good garbage collectors to have.
Is there a way I can avoid catching turtles and better chance with otter. I also read the otters have a huge 40-50 mile home range and travel a lot. I have two game cams out and its that time of the year the geese take over.

Thanks in advance.

Fred, sorry about your bad news on otters.

However, in another way it is good news, because you have now figured out while you no longer have any 5# bass. Hopefully, you can rebuild your fishery back to that level.

Unfortunately, trapping and eliminating the otters is going to be a long job, and will probably be "never ending". Every time you improve your fish population to be better than what is in the swamp, then the otters will eventually figure that out and come to your place for the better eating.

I can't give you any good trapping advice. But there are multiple members that are excellent trappers.

You should probably go to the "Questions & Observations" sub-forum and click the blue button in the upper left that says "New Thread". If you start a new thread with a title like "Advice for Eliminating Otters?", you should get some good help from the forum experts.

Good luck on getting your fish population back into good shape!

Awesome report and pictures. As Mr. Lusk says ( Paraphrased not a quote) Mother Nature won't tolerate an over abundance and it sounds like you have a honey hole so lots of predator's will be attracted.

Good luck with your battle and keep the pictures coming!

I had five otters a few years ago. I talked them into leaving. Knock on wood, I haven’t seen any since. I restocked YP. So, the otters will probably be back. My pond is only a few miles from Mark Twain lake. It has an otter problem. I’m sure that’s where my otters came from. Nothing I can do about that, but just wait for them to come back. I was very fortunate in that the ones that did show up were relatively stupid. They swam around me even in the middle of the day..

Thanks for all the valuable information.

Caught a GBH in the act. Fortunately it was a YBH. If only they could be trained to eat the fish we don't want.
He didn't seem to mind the drone. I was about 300 yards away at the house so had to drive down and scare him away.

Learnin',

Am I missing something? Or, is that YBH just the head of one? Sure looks like the leftovers after cleaning one.

Yep, just the head left. I didn't clean one so something captured it and had already ate the rest.

That heron was definitely a fan of the Dr. Demento radio show!

GBH are never seen drinking cappuccino in Italian restaurants with Oriental women.

I'll share an idea for others to try. I have never found a great way to scare of the GBH at our place. I have tried all different ways and he/she just circles up into a big dead tree next to the pond or behind the house and then a few minutes later comes back and starts fishing again. Often if I'm successful a few too many times I'll catch him coming back at 11:30-Midnight and doing his thing. How in the world do they fish in the dark????

Since I have to walk or run down to the pond from the house it would be nice to be able to scare it away from the front porch. I'm sure a BB or pellet gun might work but I don't want to break a federal law by killing it. Airsoft isn't accurate at that distance. I imagine a remote control car or a drone would work fine to scare them away but that means it has to always be charged and ready.

Our youngest son has developmental needs and low vision plus problems understanding in his brain what he is seeing. We use a roughly 14"x10" mirror (amazon) propped in front of him to help him learn to make out faces by looking at his own. One day I grabbed that mirror and stepped on the front porch and in a second I was reflecting the strong sun light into the eyes of the GBH. I don't know if his retina was burning or just the flash of the light as I tried to aim it in his eyes was enough but he was immediately gone.

The advantage of this was it was easy to keep a mirror by the front door. The sun reflection allowed me to create a very bright and annoying 'laser beam' at quite a distance and was very visible and effective (for the time being) scaring the GBH away.

Disadvantage is it may not reflect a half a mile or more. Also, of course, in Michigan it is often cloudy and you need good strong sunlight. However in most states especially southern states I'm sure the sun is pretty strong and visible all day long. As I came out on the porch and the GBH saw even the slightest flash of light he took off immediately as he learned that he didn't like that light in his eyes. The rest of the week I only saw the GBH at night.

I would think even a hand mirror used to see the back of a lady's hairdo would work but a larger lightweight one worked well for us. Here is an example on amazon.

non-breakable acrylic mirror example



Give it a try!

Another nice BG. Already removed the 60 BG for this year, so the rest go back in. Cool purple color!

Good looking fish RAH

We had a whopper of a rainstorm with high winds. It blew my rain gauge over but neighbors got over 6 inches. I am finally, after a bunch of years, at full pool on all 4 ponds.

It also took down a huge oak and deposited it in my big pond. The tree was airborne for about 50 feet. Oaks have tanins which can kill fish. Lusk told me no problem over 3 acres. I didn’t like the idea so I sent my grown grandson and his buddy to use the tractor to pull it out.

Now I gotta motivate their butts into turning it into firewood.

Then I have to get them to cut up 4 or 5 other ancient downed oaks into firewood.

The old guy, that would be me, has arthritis that kicks in when I bend my back too much on a task. Can no longer pick up really heavy stuff and this tree pieces will dang sure be heavy. Yeah, I’ll buy the beer.

Dave glad to hear you got some rain but hate the damage to trees. We have had 8 inches in the last week also but thankfully no bad winds. I figure the rain is over till fall if it follows past years.
Put a cedar tree standing up in front of pier to see if it will bring any remaining BCP in . Just put it in yesterday and already small BG were in it….. we will see

Went to see if anything was at cedar placed yesterday held anything and spotted a group of yoy fish near the surface at tree. Was hoping they were BCP but could see that they had the telltale blackish stripe indicating that they were LMB. Was probably several hundred of them. They ranged in size from 3/4”-2” with the larger ones closer to the surface

I had Nate Herman come and bring his shock boat to a customers pond. Shocked up 4, 5 and 6 pound bass, the 5 and 6 pound bass had probably 8"-9" bluegills in their gut, the 6# one had two BG tails sticking out. We also shocked 2 TGC. One 46" and 49#, the other 32" and 39#. Pics when I can come up for air, which will be in about 2 weeks. 18 hour days are the norm now.....

I took a buddy fishing in another customers pond around 5-20. The owner was there and kept us company the whole time, which was great. My buddy caught a 12.5", 2.15# HBG. The picture doesn't do the fish justice. I caught a lot of 10" 1.8 - 1.9 pound BG and HBG..

Great idea! What about a strong laser?? Green maybe?? As soon as they see me they are flying away.

Hi folks. My pond was dug last September and topped out by February, so very pleased. It’s a watershed pond, and because surrounding area hasn’t recovered from the construction the water clarity isn’t great.

Mid April, when ice broke, I added 25 pounds of FHM and 250 BG. The pond has an assortment of artificial habitat. Location is NY state.

Walking around the pond I see a ton of pollywogs, but not a single fish. Anything I should be concerned about?

I’ve attached a few pics: 1) adding fish with fish structure in view 2) spillway showing clarity and frog eggs and 3) pollywogs.

Caught a two inch rain Sunday morning. Ponds are full and the ground is saturated so water runs everywhere. They are saying we could get two to four inches of rain this week too.

Todynot, you should be able to see some fish, and sometimes it takes a lot of observation time.

If you start throwing some feed, you should see bluegill and fatheads hitting it.

Pat, I also had some big oaks that got broken at the base in a pasture by the house. Grandsons have been working their butts off turning it into firewood.

Several others over the 133 acres are busted down but they can wait. They will be done before deer season. They don’t like chain saw noise while hunting.

Big on these trees is an understatement.

I felled a bunch of Siberian Elms last fall, well ahead of deer season. In one spot, the easy felling direction of the trees created a nice u-shaped structure.

When I went back a few weeks later to put up game cameras, it was obvious the deer had really loved the chainsaw work. They ate a bunch of the green new-growth off of the "tops" of the felled trees. They set up a scrape and a licking twig. The entirety of the inside of the "U" was either bedded down grass or hoofprints. When I walked inside of the structure, it was very easy to see out, but would have been difficult to see any still animal from the outside.

The deer that have survived a few thousand years of culling by bow and arrow, and then by firearm are pretty darn smart these days.