Wow, I'm blown away by how helpful the mods on this forum are. Seriously, thank you so much. I just signed up for the PB magazine because I want to support what you guys are doing here.
That said, I have more questions based on Bill's post:
Feeding - my only experience with feeding fish is feeding my pet goldfish as a kid. Let's say I wanted to go all in on the idea of feeding all my fish (LMB, BG, and GSH fry):
- Do they all eat the same food? If so, what is it?
- If I have around 400 mature BG and a dozen mature LMB, how much would I feed?
- I don't have a dock to put a feeder on, so I would likely just throw the food in by hand. How often would I want to do this?
- And what part of the pond would I throw the food into? From our fishing this year, we've learned that the bass tend to hang out in the shallower areas, whereas the bluegills tend to hang out on the deeper side by the fountain.
- To feed the GSH fry powdered food, would I throw that into the shallow areas? Or sprinkle it all around the outside of the pond?
Weeds
- That "small pondweed" looks very familiar. I'm sure that we have some of that in the pond.\
- There is also something that grows small leaves on the surface too. Maybe that's the american pondweed also?
Water clarity
- In the early spring, the water clarity is definitely over 3'. The property owner (who also has a house on the property) likes to put blue dye into the water early summer... despite me asking him not to. I think if I pushed harder, he might be willing to stop doing that. What do you guys think about the blue dye? He adds it to try and kill the plants (which doesn't work) and to make it look "prettier." Is it harming the fishery significantly enough for me to make a stink about it? Or should I just let it go?
- With the blue dye in the pond, visibility shrinks to a foot or so.
- The brown tinge could definitely come from runoff. There's a french drain that connects the pond to a roadside ditch... 150 yards or so away. Some days the stuff coming out of that drain is... very brown/orange looking. Like a bright rust color. There are also tons of leaves in the area due to woods nearby. So it's probably both.
- I'd say the natural color of the pond is fairly clear with a brownish tinge.
Minnows
- I'm happy to feed my bass some fathead minnows for a few weeks to train them. I have a bait farm nearby that is reasonably priced. How long would the minnows live in a kiddie pool? I could aerate it, but would the ammonia buildup kill them or anything? I currently don't have a mesh/netted place for them to live in the pond and would have to keep them in a pool or bucket in the garage.
Retonone
- My wife would never let me do this haha. I'm going to have to fix the current situation with a hook and line.
Again gentlemen, thank you so much!
