First, I'd like to say thanks for the welcome to the boards, and thanks for all of your quick responses. I love to fish and am excited to get my pond in good condition, so all help is much appreciated.
I am located just outside of Tippecanoe, Indiana which is in northern Indiana. I am about 1/2 mile from a branch of the Tippecanoe River, but the pond has no connection to the river.
I have been worried about low oxygen levels in the pond since it froze over because of the low water levels due to the lack of rain this past summer/fall, and I do think oxygen levels are extremely low because of that and the rough winter. I actually went out there a few days after I saw all those minnows and the open holes were filled with dead minnows. Honestly I wasn't too worried about it this year, because I don't think there are too many "good" fish in the pond probably because of past winter kills, and the pond is going to need a renovation anyway. This spring I am going to have an aerator installed to hopefully help prevent future winter kills.
Some pond background so maybe you can get an idea of what I've got here... this is all that I know in the 6 months that I've owned it...
The pond right now is only about 6' at it's deepest and only about an acre maybe in size, but this summer when the water was at proper levels it was about 8 or 9' and about 1 1/2 acres I'm guesssing. The pond is made up of rainwater/runoff. No creek or river or other source of water for about 1/2 mile. I think the pond may have a weak spring under it since I did find a few weak spots in the ice but it was (and still is) completely frozen over.
This summer the pond was absolutely packed with frogs. Thousands of frogs. The pond is generally, like I said, about 8 or 9 feet in the center for about an acre or under, then it kind of branches out into shallower swamp-like portions that are normally only about 2 or 3' deep. It is also completely surrounded by trees so I'm sure it gets lots of leaves in it. There was no algae on the top of the water this summer, and I only snagged a few weeds in the deepest parts of the pond. But they were at the very bottom only. No weeds are visible. The water is a muddy brown color and so visibility is probably only about 6 or 8 inches. The ground isn't really clay or "muck", but if I had to describe it, I'd say it's like a sandy mud combination. Can you tell I'm not a biologist..
As far as things I'd really like to do, but I don't know if they will happen at all, or atleast in the near future:
1) Have the pond dug out to increase depth and hopefully rid of some of the organic matter in the pond. My only issue is, a significant amount of trees would probably have to be removed to get that done and I don't know if I'm ok with that.
2) I would like to have a geothermal heating unit put in my house and dump the excess water into the pond. It seems to me that the fresh water expelled in to the pond would do it good and it would probably keep it from freezing completely over as well. Or atleast it would stay open where the incoming water was at. My only concern with that is, once the pond fills to it's capacity in the event of large amounts of rain combined with my geothermal water, I'm not sure where the water would go. I have no ditch or creek to overflow the water to.
As far as other fish in the pond, the only thing I've caught are these golden shiners. I did see one abandoned fish bed this summer near the shore that to me looked like a bass bed. I also did put a couple hundred bluegill and crappie in the pond this summer that I relocated from another friend's pond, but I never could catch any a couple months after putting them in there. So I don't know if they were/are living after I put them in.
About the golden shiners, should I do something about the large populations? Can I put a certain fish in there that would help control the shiner and frog populations? Bass? Would the shiners have anything to do with the murky water, or would that be mainly from the organic matter that's in the pond? Also, since the golden shiners are obviously doing ok in the pond (other than the low oxygen level), does this mean bass, bluegill, crappie, etc should do ok in the pond's current condition (again barring the low oxygen level if I get that in check) or are these shiners more tolerant to varying water conditions?
SO... my first plan this summer is to install an aerator. I talked to a wildlife biologist via email that had been to my property about 4 years ago and she thought the lack of gamefish in my pond was most likely from past fish kills. Do you think the aerator will solve the low oxygen level problem in the winter? And from what I've got from this site already is to put the aerator in a shallower spot to prevent freezing the fish during the winter. From there, does anyone have a gameplan on what I should do to get the pond in a good, fish-friendly condition?
Thanks for all of your input. I realized I just put a TON of info out there so you can comment on whatever you like. I may need to have this thread moved now to a different topic since you guys nailed down that mystery fish for me!
