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

I stocked Tilapia from a local fish farm - 19 miles away, $13/lb. 10 lbs in the 2/3 acre pond and 5 lbs in the 1/2 acre pond.

Theo, Is it common by you that fish farms carry Tilapia? I'd love to see fish farms or even a larger aquaculture shop be prepared to have larger quantity of tilapia to sell. Tilapia are allowed to be stocked in ponds in MI as long as the pond has no connection to another body of water but it seems no one is interested in keeping a large enough supply on hand to be able to sell them in any quantity. I think hobby size aquaculture may sell a breeding pair or two but not many other options that I have found. I'm glad you have a source relatively close to your ponds.

We currently have the one fish farm with Tilapia in easy driving distance (that I know of; we found them online when I stopped doing business with the large regional fish/pond service I had previously gotten Tilapia from two years ago); they sell mixed sex fish suitable for pond stocking. Up until a couple of years ago there was another one that only grew male Tilapia, mostly just hauled and sold to restaurants and open markets around Ohio (although you could go there one day a week to buy them for your own consumption). The owner of that fish farm retired and shut down.

Both places were/are aquaculture operations with big recirculating tanks inside pole buildings.

If I wanted a list of all such fish farms in Ohio, I'd ask the Ohio Aquaculture Association. Perhaps Michigan has something similar?

Today I had the two Aussies hop into the rowboat and took them for a row around the pond. We disturbed a nesting mallard from her clutch of 8 eggs on our floating island and picked up 9 floating dead fish, two YP, a GSH, one BCP, and the rest GSF, BG, and HBG. This is the only occasion I've witnessed several dead fish. Most of these were large, at least for this pond. 2 of the GSF measured 10" of stinking, rotting missed trophy potential. 1 of the YP was 12", the other 10".

As disconcerting it is to see some of my best panfish belly up, I'm making the assumption these losses were a result of the several days of rain we had this week. Pond temp was 66 degrees this morning; the FA is still going gangbusters. I've been waiting to rake out the mats of FA, hoping that a rain event would sink it into the beds of elodea and then I'd drag it out when I raked the weeds. That ain't happening yet.

One of these days the water will warm above the temp that FA likes, it will die back and sink, and I can get to work. For me the only part of the weed removal that I enjoy is seeing and identifying all the critters that come in with the pulled weeds.

No FA yet, in any quantity, but we still have tons of leaves from last fall. When raking them out last weekend there were hundreds of tiny crawfish in the 1/4” range. Still seeing a fair amount of glass shrimp also. Looks like my APW is coming back. We didn’t have much last year with the pond so low, hop this year it will come back stronger. And hopefully the crawfish will control it.
Pond is very close to full, as we continue to get rain. Now I’m concerned about getting food plots in. Fields are pretty muddy.
Going back up in a few days to mow.

Took wife, daughter, son in law and great grandson fishing and 4 wheeler riding. The 4 year old got to help great grandpoppy drive the tractor. They caught some small bluegills and saw my last 5 ft long catfish come up for pellets.

Walked around the pond with the GPS app on my phone, it's 2.48 AC, still 3 inches above full pool. It has dropped a foot today.

Found this little CC in the emergency spillway, I didn't think I had the type of preferred habitat for them to spawn in the pond. Nothing that resembles a cavern. Apparently they found something they like to use. Also found a 7 in CNBG that a GBH or Cormorant got and couldn't eat. Had a single hole about 1/2 inch from it's dorsal fin. Also found the BG below, guess they are just stupid and don't know they are too big to eat.

I was surprised that the water temperature has increased from 71 to 79 in one week, high temp has only been 88 until today. I figured it would have risen that many degrees since there's 4 feet of fresh water in the pond.

I have heard that CC in ponds with no cavity structures can still sometimes pull off successful spawns.

One theory is that they can deepen an existing depression or cut in the bank.

I don't know the truth, but your cute little CC fingerling shows that they manage it somehow!

+1 on the channel cats spawning in ponds with no cavity structure.

You sure thats not a baby bullhead? The fork in the tail looks like a rip to me instead of a characteristic.

IMO body shape on that size of fish is too slender for a bullhead. Bullheads tend to be more bulky in the head region. Exceptions do occur. It would have been better to identify if the tail was not split or torn. Bullheads have a rounded tail.

Hard to tell. Baby channels I've seen are typically more silver (often with some spots), have a pronounced forked tail fin, and a dark boarder around the fin. I wonder if it would be worth fishing with some worms or chicken livers a couple of times to see if a bigger specimen could be caught?

Good idea - do some fishing with worm placed near the bottom to see if you can get a couple more individuals. If you have bullheads it should not be hard to catch a few more.

Both CC and YBH exist in my pond.

It is possible that the tail was split somehow but I noticed the difference as soon as I picked them up so I'm inclined to believe it is a CC.

Another indicator to me that this was a CC is that it did not have the needle sharp fins.
That is blood where the YBH finned me, not from gripping him but just from him flopping once while I took the picture. I've caught several and they often draw blood where a CC will not. The YBH seem to lock their Pectoral fins when they are caught.

Here's a picture of 2 of them found in the emergency overflow that day.
I know the YBH spawned last year, but never seen anything that looked like a CC.





I'm thinking a sein survey would be good way to get more samples.

If you have bullhead spawning and surviving it is very likely that you will have CC spawning and surviving.

If you have bullhead spawning and surviving it is very likely that you will have CC spawning and surviving.

This is one of the reasons many of us have ponds. Had grandkids at the pond and let them hand feed fish that were hammering the pellets. The one in the picture is just about 3 and looks to be my future fishing buddy.

Daughter, son in law, and their 4 or 5 year old grandson headed to my place. That little guy fell in love with fishing and I fell in love with watching him pull in whopper bluegills on a cane pole.

Dave I can't agree more. The pleasure of watching your grandkids enjoy themselves with something you helped create is immense. This is in part why we do what we do,

Went fishing!!!

The "Choctaw Summer Learning Center " a program teaching children practical and fun things to do , brought out 34 children, 10 teachers, a couple life guards , and 34 fishing poles . The children were from my belt to just under my arm pits and I'm 6'-0" . After fishing they took CC home and parent volunteers taught fish cleaning and some families enjoyed fried CC. What a wonderful day at my pond. Every child showed respect , I explained the water depth, those that didn't swim, quietly lined up for life jackets. July 16th , the next group comes out. Before the concerns are voiced , I carry 2 million in liability for Hillwilliam Farms Fishing & RV plus the farm carries a separate 1 million on the farm property. A great day at the pond , what I received as a child, making possible for other's children.

That is awesome.

The goals for my pond are not quite that big. But it is to provide kids with a place to learn about fish and fishing.

That is exactly what I'm wanting to do with my pond, have had plans on that for since I built it, with fifteen acres there's way more then I can catch myself and few family members and friends.
With the pond having been stocked for about 5 yrs now the fishing is just starting to get really good, because of the astronomic cost of stocking a large body of water like that I didn't stock it to max capacity, my fish supplier worked with me to just stock it about half throttle and let the reproduction of those fish populate the pond, so it took a little longer for it to be great fishing but saved a ton of money in the process.
I also don't have the insurance policy in place to cover something like that and not even sure what that would entail, was gonna sit down with an agent and see what we could figure out.
Hunting on the property is about the same way, I love to hunt but get almost a bigger kick out of watching a kid get his first deer.
I have a friend Ive been talking to that manages hunts for terminally ill and handicapped kids, think Im going to turn the hunting over to him for the kids and maybe help guide them. He says there is an immense amount of satisfaction in doing it, beats killing a monster yourself.

Mowed around the pond (wanted it to look nice on Father’s Day). Then flew the drone over it. Still have brownish algae, but we are finally getting some sun, and it’s greening up.

Nice picture.

Mine looked like that a week ago. It went from looking like Chocolate milk to dark brown.
BG feeding dropped off to very low activity with about 4 feet of new water. Every fish I catch is fat so they've got plenty to eat.

CC had stopped feeding for about 2 weeks but now are feeding like normal.

Secchi disk visibility is 30 inches. Water temperature is 85 degrees F.
Should I have water tests done or is this something someone has seen before. Was curious if the dark brown tint was caused by all the Bushy Pondweed that was in 4 feet of water and is now in 7+ feet starting to die??