We had a strange winter and an even stranger spring. April and May were very wet and cool. We got ten inches of rain during the second week of April, and then again during the third week of April. The emergency overflow of my lowest pond had 18-24 inches of water, 8-foot wide, for over two weeks. It is rare to have water in the overflow. Maybe a few inches every year or so.

I suspect it washed most of my CC, LMB, HSB and big BG out of that pond. I found lots of my big HBG in my brood pond and a settlement pond that came from my uppermost HBG/CC/HSB pond. They are between my uppermost and lowest ponds.

Things seemed strange. In May, my friends and I were catching almost nothing. No bluegill over about 6-7 inches, in a pond that regularly produced 10-11 inch bluegill. Almost no LMB. The few we did get were 6-7 inches. There was no evidence of spawning.

About the third week of May, the water in my lower pond was only at 58 degrees and the upper pond was at 53 degrees. I just started to see spawning activity about two weeks ago. The fish started feeding about three weeks ago.

Last week the water was finally in the mid 60s. I'm kind of starting over. I think the BG will recover in that pond. I put 100 2-4 inch tilapia in each of the ponds last week. It was time to add CC to both ponds, so they each got 25 5-7 inch CC. The HBG pond got 100 3-4 inch HBG. Both ponds will get HSB in the fall before the tilapia start to die off. I'll see if the LMB have grow in that pond. If not, I'll stock some with the HSB.

So, that is a long winded way of saying that our spawns have been very delayed this year because of very cool water conditions.

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