I was really excited to have my pond in a position that it felt like it was just about completely set up. My forage base still seemed to be very strong and my fish were growing well. My water quality seemed pretty decent and my water clarity was somewhere in the 14"-18" range.
My forage pond was completely full and its runoff was no contributing to keeping my large BOY of topped off. In one of the pictures you'll see that I need to adjust my spillway on my forage pond a few inches as there is almost NO freeboard when the emergency spillway is running a couple inches deep. Still some adjustments to be made there. This pond has really frustrated me though. I put in 20 lbs. of FHM in the fall of 2020 with a plan to trap several pounds a month in the future to add to my large pond just to supplement with. The pond is about 6 feet deep with fairly steep sides to avoid a ton of vegetation growing. I cut 4" corrugated pipe into 1' lengths, drilled a hole through it and strung it accross the pond in three different places to give them spawning habitat. I spaced each section out about 3' on the rope and anchored them from just under the surface to a couple feet deep. I had read that FHM are territorial when they spawn and wear themselves out competiting for areas so I thought this would allow them plenty of space to space without too much competition. I was never able to pull any minnows out worth throwing in my pond. The 20 lbs. that I put in were large, healthy minnows and all I could ever catch were tiny, 1" little things. I'm not sure if it was a spawning habitat issue or a lack of food or another issue. I really thought you couldn't screw up FHM, but somehow here I am. I do feed them with ground up food once a week or so, but forget quite often. This spring I added a whole bunch of hedge tops that reach all the way to the surface in hopes that it helps, but we will see. I'm planning to add GSH to the pond just to keep their population going strong in my large BOY. I hope this is a good idea and I'm not really sure how much I can expect to take out of there in a season. Any ideas on my issues with this 0.2 acre BOY? There are no predators in there. The water is pretty cloudy.
One of the most exciting things we introduced in 2021 was the purchase of a fish tagging system. I taught science for 14 years, so data collection and interpretation are always fascinating to me. We purchased 100 tags and created a document that tracks the following: species, date caught, time of day caught, tag number, location in the pond caught, means of catching, length, weight, length/weight ratio, and a column for additional notes. We started tagging and documenting about 80% of the fish that we caught and have had an absolute blast doing it! On top of the valuable information we are starting to compile, it is always fun to reel in a fish that has been previously caught and check to see how much or how little they have grown. I always laughed at people who said, shortly after a catching two fish within a few minutes of each other, "that's the same fish!" We have actually had that happen a time or two because the tags certainly don't lie! I will attach some images of the document in a later post.
In the southeast corner of the pond near the treehouse, we get almost half our runoff. I was able to build a simple catch basin and pipe it into the pond. This has provided a couple benefits. One, it has kept silt and clay out during heavy rainfall. Secondly, whenever whatever is blowing through the pipe and into the pond, you better grab a rod and a go, because just about everything in the pond will be congretating in front of it. This was the case on June 26th, 2021 when my favorite little fishing buddy and I headed out to see if that held true once again. After catching a couple SMB on just a few casts, my daughter hooked what she thought was another smallie. It certainly fought like one. When she got it to the bank, it turned out to be an 11.25", 1 lb. 2 oz. RES! I know they grow really big down south, but that qualified for a Master Angler award from the Missouri Department of Conservation. I thought we might get a few to this size eventually, but this fish was just barely 3 years old at the time. I don't know who was more excited, my daughter or me!
I have also attached a picture of an image from my side imaging sonar that shows the two concrete boats that my science class had built that we sunk on the bottom of the pond. You can easily made out a large cedar tree seperating them. Side imaging is a pretty cool technology!
