I stocked additional Grass Carp in my pond in the spring of 2005, to support the earlier ones I stocked in 2003, that weren't having much of an impact or had possibly died. We can only re-stock Grass Carp in Pa. every two years. This spring (2006), I had an outrageous curly leaf pond weed bloom, which subsided naturally towards June. Since then, the weed control has been fairly good with the Grass Carp, although I did have to use chemicals in August as the coontail and milfoil were over-running the pond. The grass carp are now about three feet in length.

Since we haven't had any ice yet in NW Pa., I have been able to monitor my pond pretty well this winter season. I have several Bryzoan colonies (green blobs) and some more than desired sub-surface weed growth, along with the usual cold weather filamentous algae.

My question is do Grass Carp stop or severely slow down their eating of vegetation in the winter months? I don't even see them in the shallows like I did in the summer months, so I hope they didn't get eaten by a pesky blue heron we have around from time to time. Of course, none of the other fish are abundant in the shallows. I have a shallow pond and the bottom is pretty much weed covered most of the time. I just thoguht it would be pretty barren by now.

Thanks for your experiences.