Advice on Fishing Pond/Lake

[bindian]

I only have Painted turtles - but lots of them.

Do Y'all have Red Eared Sliders up there? That is the only painted turtle I know.
hugs, Brandi

 

[oosik]

Brandi - no, as far as I can tell - only Painted turtles. Red Eared Sliders are, supposedly, a southern variety. Although, there are reports of them in more northern climes.

Have you ever seen a coyote attack and eat a turtle. It's a "hard" meal but with persistence they will complete the job. I get an early summer migration of turtles from my little lake to my big lake. The coyotes take this opportunity to eat as many as possible. There are always many old dry shells lying about.

 

[MossRoad]

Red eared sliders are considered invasive. They were the ones that you could buy in a dime store when we were kids. Since they can live over 25 years in captivity, people get tired of them and let them go. That's why they're all over the place now.

Painted turtles are different species. They are the most wide-spread native turtles in the U.S.

Saw my first turtle of the year last week sunning itself on a log. March 3rd or 4th I think.

 

[the old grind]

A friend paid for me to attend pond seminars to help him out back in the '90s before I had my own to tend to. Plants, buffers, stocking, etc I attended several sessions. He ignored most of what we learned, mows to the water's edge, planted water lillies in USDA Zone 5, set aerating emitters too deep, you name it.

One thing I came away with is an apparent misconception about snappers. (rows of humps on carapace, hooked 'beak', long tail) We were told that snappers break only weak or rotted sticks having supposedly only 10lb of biting force. What would cost a guy a finger was trying to pull it away from several pounds of turtle so quickly the finger (skin) might remain with the animal. Bigger the turtle the more inertia to yank against. I have not vetted this concept.

So a farmer came up the driveway, remembered the pond from the old sand pit days, and offered to drop off a 12" or so snapper. Uh, with ducks and geese nesting here I all but threatened him and told him why I wasn't interested. Same with a kid who showed up with a catfish caught next door. After showing it to me he suggested dropping it into my water. I made sure he took it back to David's.

Be wary of folks offering to 'help' you stock your pond or stir things up to gain fishing per. After leaving hooks in the water tied off to the dock, s-foam bait containers and candy wrappers strewn about, and letting fish they caught 'to eat' rot w/o being fileted "no way Jose!" and "I used to fish here" is no way for a stranger to invite himself back. To a few I said, "You don't have a pond, I don't have a woman. Bring a female over 18 YO to hang out with me while you fish." No one has vetted my offer.

 

[TBone]

From how it was explained to my by our DNR many years ago when I helped with a fish kill/restock program in Boy Scouts, a body of water can only support so many pounds of fish based on the nutrients available, stuff like that. So, let's say your pond can support 1000 pounds of fish.

1 - 1000lb fish
10 - 100lb fish
100 - 10lb fish
1000 - 1lb fish
10,000 - .10lb fish

Or some combination of all of them.

Make sense?

Adding baitfish to your pond won't do anything right now, I'd think, as there are already plenty of small fish. And you should be throwing any fish of size right back into that pond, and keeping any small fish that you catch. Even with that, you'd have to fish it pretty aggressively to get a large number of small fish out of there, especially it being 8-9 acres.

I'd contact your local Department of Natural Resources, County Extension Agent, etc... and talk to a state biologist. Many states have FREE services to help you get a picture of your pond's health and ways to manage it.

Nice looking place, by the way.

Thanks Moss. I will try to contact some local or state folks this summer and see what they suggest.

 

[TBone]

If all shorelines are bare as shown in the pic you may be lacking baitfish cover and a wildlife 'buffer' to encourage diversity in & around the pond/lake. I have a lot of shoreline (>2k ft) for 3+ ac of water, as much as if all three ac were separate ponds. With bushy and brushy surroundings shore maintenance becomes a year-round job, though. I only have a few places one can walk to shore to fish or to launch a canoe.

Not that everyone should, but I encourage patches of cattails in areas where they do best. (Muskrats keep them from getting out of hand and are usually shot after a day or two of scouting their swimming routes) I bought this place post sand/gravel pit, and shores were bare. For a few years I planted fathead minnows but the 'tails prospered & that became unnecessary after a few more.

Channel cats were my main predators, some introduced by Don's truckers over several decades. I used to scare away Herons, not wanting them to steal bass that the cats out-competed. Reducing catfish numbers helped, and the birds seem to prefer 8' - 12' largemouths which helps keep their numbers in check. There are plenty of shallow areas for them to hunt. Biggest bass caught last year was >3 lb and thrown back. Bass season is 'closed' for spawning In the Spring for a reason like with many species. (coyotes, etc)

Something I learned but never did is to wrap old Christmas with chicken wire and drop them into mid-depth areas as structure. Varying depths along shore can be good to have and shallows need to be appreciated vs kept 'cleared' like swimming beaches. There will be an occasional perch or crappie seen or caught but neither can spawn here. (from goose poop?) Bass and bream will spawn just about anywhere. Balancing populations includes much trial and error for best fishing. Doing fine after 20 years here as of this month.

Yep, all the shorelines are bare as a baby's booty. I need some advice on what to plant for some cover. My last little pond got completely taken over with lily pads, introduced by cranes I guess. They choked out everything and made it impossible to fish in.

 

[MossRoad]

Thanks Moss. I will try to contact some local or state folks this summer and see what they suggest.

Free stuff from the state sometimes makes you feel like you're getting some of your tax money back, too. Back around 1989 we had 2150 trees purchased, planted, and side sprayed and then were reimbursed 75% of the cost because it was an erosion program. $265.00 total out of pocket once it was done.

There are many programs available by state. Take advantage of them if available.

 

[bindian]

Red eared sliders are considered invasive. They were the ones that you could buy in a dime store when we were kids. Since they can live over 25 years in captivity, people get tired of them and let them go. That's why they're all over the place now.

Painted turtles are different species. They are the most wide-spread native turtles in the U.S.

Saw my first turtle of the year last week sunning itself on a log. March 3rd or 4th I think.

When they get to a certain size, they become targets here. When they get too friendly and come near the catfish feeding ring, I bring the 22 with the catfish food.
hugs, Brandi

 

[dragoneggs]

That lake is so cool, oosik!!!

 

[EddieWalker]

MossRoad came the closest to what is happening in your pond. The rule of thumb is 100 pounds of predator fish per acre for ideal growth of your predator fish. With your pond being 8 acres, that means you want the total weight of all the predator fish in the pond to be around 800 pounds. Since you cannot catch and weigh all of them, that's just a guideline to let you know where you want to be.

Since you are catching small bass, you know that you have plenty of feeder fish. Adding more will not increase the size of your predator fish. In fact, it will allow more of them to survive and make things even worse.

Bass have a weird thing about the size of the food that they eat. For a bass to grow, it's food has to grow. Small food means small bass. The goal is to allow your feeder fish to get bigger. This only happens when you remove predators from the pond. You cannot stop them from reproducing, so you have to start removing them by the hundreds to get to where they will not put so much pressure of the feeder fish. Once the feeder fish start to grow, the bass will start to grow.

Secondary importance to feeder fish is having places to hide. This is commonly called structure. Logs, stumps, old Christmas trees, large pipes, docks and just about anything else that can be put into a pond for fish to hide in, or creates escape paths for the feeder fish to get away from the predators, will increase the size of the feeder fish.

The most obvious thing for you to do is to start fishing. Never put a bass back into the pond. At my pond, the only rule that I tell friends that fish in it is to keep everything that they catch. On a good day, we might take out 20 or more small bass. But even if we only catch a few, that's better then nothing. We went from only catching one pound bass for years, to slowly working our way up to 3 pound, then 5 pound and now 7 1/2 pound bass. This has taken years to achieve, and hundreds of small bass have been removed. My pond is 4 1/2 acres, so about half of what you are having to deal with.

You can also contact a fish biologist, or person that manages ponds. They can come out with a boat that drops an rod into the water and electrocutes the fish. It stuns them to floating to the surface, where it's easy to scoop them up with a net. The one time that I did this, we where just identifying and counting the fish in a 25 acre pond and weighing them to determine what's in there. Each time the water was zapped, I would scoop up a couple dozen fish. If you can do that on your pond, that would give you a huge jump in getting your pond where it needs to be.

This is my wife with her 7 1/2 pound bass from our pond.