What weird things are going on in your ponds?

[MossRoad]

Moss - as sad as the story is regarding your oxbow lake - you should hear the hoar stories of when Fish & Game Depts started using Toxaphene. Tox was mega times more effective and lethal than rotenone. I worked for ADF&G(Alaska) during the very few years they experimented with Tox. Fortunately, Tox is now a prohibited chemical in USA.

As an example - My father, who was a fisheries biologist here in WA, used Tox on the little five acre lake here. Somebody had dumped their bucket of live bait into the little lake and it became overpopulated with goldfish. Tox is a vey heavy chemical and will sink to the lake bottom and become incorporated in the bottom sediments. Every spring when a lake "turns over" the sediments and the Tox will repoison the lake. Our little five acre lake remained "hot" for five years after that one single poisoning event. Needless to say, long before the lake became clean again - everything in the lake had died.

YIKES! Sounds like horrible stuff.

 

[CajunRider]

WE AIN'T GOT NO GATORS HERE!!!! :laughing:

Well.... at least not too many

Surprise Gator Hunt in Indiana | Field & Stream

That 6 foot gator is no 150 lb gator. All the 6 ft gator I have ever seen weighed less than 100 lb. 7 footer can be 130 lbs. 8 footer is around 160. 9 ft is around 190. 10 ft is around 220. After 10 ft the girth grows a whole lot and the weight varies a lot.

BTW, I fished the pond again this past weekend. It appears I have a school of about 10 reds left in my pond. They are aggressively going round and round the pond, chasing and eating every thing in sight. I got two more for dinner last night so there are now about 8. It was fun watching them chasing the minnows all the way to the bank. I saw zero blue gills or bass. I initially stocked the pond with 1000 blue gills and 50 bass fingerlings. Then last year my friends gave me 200 full size blue gills hoping to get the population started. I took the water from the pond and conditioned them in a large tank and they lived so I knew the water was OK. I put them in the pond and did not see one after that.

 

[EddieWalker]

I just watched on the news that this guy with a screened in swimming pool found a catfish swimming in his pool. The screen above the pool was damaged and he guesses that a bird was carrying the fish and dropped it. The fish got lucky and landed in the swimming pool. If a swimming pool can get stocked by mother nature, I'm sure that's how our ponds get new types of fish.

 

[MossRoad]

On our land there is a small stream. One day I found a 10" sucker laying in the shallow gasping. I picked it up and it had talon marks in it. Pretty cool. Well, not for the sucker, but to see nature at work. :thumbsup:

 

[Navasot]

Plenty of otters, gators, bull frogs, cotton mouths here but nothing weird... I wish I had some redfish in my pond! I did put in some shad a few years back leftover from a fishing trip and somehow they have done well... but that's bout it lol

 

[oosik]

Keeping a healthy population of fish in any pond is all about year-round oxygen levels. If the pond is shallow - the summer heat will drive up the water temperatures and "hot water" can not hold enough oxygen. Likewise - a shallow pond looses oxygen in the winter, with an ice cover, because the organics in the bottom sediments use up all the oxygen as it decomposes. There are ways around this but they can be pretty expensive and are not always fool proof.

The best way to determine if a pond will maintain a population of fish is to determine oxygen levels during the hottest time of the year and during the winter, if the pond gets an ice cover. Generally speaking, salmonids(trout & salmon types) must have at least 8 to 10 PPM(parts per million) of oxygen, year round. Spiny ray fish(bass, carp, shiners, tench, blue-gills etc) will survive down to around 5 PPM but will become somewhat "dormant" at these levels.

Like any other living thing - as the oxygen levels approach the fishes level of tolerance - they will become much more susceptible to other factors - particularly disease and predation. Its a great pleasure to have a pond full of fish but its kind of sad to see them expire in the summer heat or to suffer "winter kill" if the pond freezes over for extended periods. Plus it can become rather expensive if a lot was invested in the initial planting.

Soooo - my point is..... know your pond and know its limitations before you spend a significant amount of money and have high hopes.

 

[MossRoad]

The DNR explained it to me this way.... no ponds around here will support trout without artificial oxygen supplementation. The water isn't moving, doesn't get oxygenated, gets too hot in summer, and even if its deep enough to remain cold, there's little oxygen down there, at least around here.

That's why they always recommend the BBC.... bass, bluegill, channel catfish in most of Indiana.

They also explained to me that a given body of water can only supply a given amount of fish mass due to the nutrition levels in the pond and its watershed. So, for example, if a pond can support 1000# of fish mass, it can be ten 100# fish or one hundred 10# fish or one thousand 1# fish or as is mostly the case after a decade of mis/non-management, ten thousand 1/10th pound fish.... stunted little bluegills.

 

[oosik]

My little lake winter killed one winter eleven years ago. Even though its spring fed & 80 feet deep - the ice was on the lake too long. When the ice melted in the spring - there was no reason to stand on the cliffs and look for fish. My nose told me what had happened. That's OK though - I got another shipment of yolk sac bass from Oswego Fish farms and popped them in the lake. I've got bass up to 5-6 pounds now and I've already seen many "pods" of baby bass all around the shore line. The main food supply for the bass here is what we call a fresh water fairy shrimp. Kind of looks like a Norwegian long boat - up-side-down - going thru the water. And, of course, baby bass.

Another treat the bass like - if you have ants. I shovel up a 5 gallon pail of ant nest & ants and throw the contents off the cliffs. Looks like feeding time at a Piranha farm.

The only down side to having large bass - the Mallards, Coot & Golden Eye no longer raise their babies on the shores of the little lake. I'm sure the old mated pair of Canadian honkers must loose a baby or two to the bass but they still have a nest every years down in the cattails on the far end of the lake.

 

[rekees4300]

What interesting things are going on in your pond?

Have 1 acre pond and never a dull moment. 2 years ago put 12 sterile Grass Carp in to control the weeds. Now ALL of the weeds and even the cattails are gone! What is puzzling is that Grass Carp aren't suppose to eat cattails so that's weird.

 

[oosik]

There is a lake about 30 miles south of me where Fish & Game introduced grass carp. I don't think you are allowed to keep them, if you catch them. I think this program got away from Fish & Game. The carp grew to become really big - look to be 4# to 6# - multiplied like mice and ripped everything from the shore line around the entire lake. This lake is a typical lake for our area - narrow and long. Its about 1/4 to 1/2 mile wide and 6 miles long.

You probably lost your cattails simply because the carp were rooting for other types of vegetation in the cattail patches.

I've seen them in action and they are really tough on aquatic vegetation.