Pond Mgmt 101

I just received a call from ODWC staff and it appears that the fish kill that I reported recently was actually almost a complete wipe out of fish. The shock boat checked the lake today and it appeared to be a desert. The algae bloom is back and the lake is ready to crash again. The lake may need to be drained, dredged and refilled. If that is done then,normally, fresh brush piles are added and other improvements are done.
The powers to be will have to make the decision to drain it. I will keep you posted.

The fish that we did not see dead must have sunk, rotted and added to the nutrient load:(:(

That is very sad to hear.

It will take at least a year or more to complete the project, I expect.:(

We have 3 options if I want to stock my pond.

1) Call a commercial fish farmer and order your fish.

2) Get them from your state wildlife department

3) Purchase a 12 volt aerator from Academy, Bass Pro, etc, preferably a dual airstone unit which costs around $20.00 - $25.00. A Lawn tractor or motor cycle battery costs around $30.00 but will provide years of service keeping your minnows alive when you need to transport them to the lake. Finally a large ice chest or a 30 - 55 gallon barrel which costs around $10.00 or free from a friend. This barrel, pump and battery will allow you to take your minnows or fish any where you wish to fish and will provide years of service. It is a great investment.

Now the fun part. Take the grandkids or neighbor kids to an area lake or pond with a box of worms and your transport tank which is filled with lake water. Let the kids catch all the sunfish they can catch which, hopefully, will be 40- 50. Put these in your new pond and wait a year for the spawning explosion of Spring and Summer. You can certainly add several dozen fathead minnows from the local bait shop for minimal expense too. If you will wait the 1 full growing season before you add any predatory bass then the number of baitfish in the pond will be almost beyond comprehension. When the bass are added in the fall they will go bananas with this smorgasbord of food. It will be like Golden Corral's Friday night buffet:)I would suggest you add around 15 12" LM bass/ surface acre to the pond. This suggestion is NOT in stone. If you stock an adult bluegill female she will produce,conservitably, 100,000 eggs in 1 season. Now multiply that by 25 or so. Hmmm 2.5 million offspring and most will survive because the predators have not been stocked. The fatheads will have similar results.It is mind boggling as to the numbers.

Today 3 perch traps are hitting the coppernosed bluegill pond in Canadian County that I have written about previously. The brood pond needs to be harvested or add some predators. This pond will be producing a stocking for a new 2 acre pond near by in a couple of hours. We should get at least 1 spawn this summer from the coppernose and by Spring all of those fish will be mature and ready to spawn. The fat heads will be stocked by October and ready to spawn in April. The buffet line will be ready by next September and the bass stock will have good growth coming out of the shoot.

Best of all, you have a pond stocked with an excellant chance of survival and a good investment in a tranport tank system which can later be used to help one of your buddies stock their pond. Your a hero:D

Minnow,minnow in the pond, oh where have thou gone????:(:confused: In mid to late July in small minnow ponds that may be sheltered from the breeze the minnows seem to dissappear from the radar. Why?? Geez during the Spring,early summer, fall and winter we could trap loads of them. What has happened? Did the die from a fish kill because of low dissolved oxygen??? What is wrong?

Let's contemplate this for a moment. The minnows NORMALLY eat plankton and microscopic organisms. WArm weather promotes the organisms growth and reproduction, but cool weather the growth slows down and there is less of them. HMMMM, could this be the answer. During warm weather the living is easy and there is plenty of food. Cool to cold weather there is not much to feed on until something smells strange, new and "lets go see if we can eat this" comes along. Smells good, but I can't quite get to it unless I swim into this black cylinder. OHHH BOY, I'M IN! Life is good again.:D and all my buddies are with me too.

UUUHHHHH OOOOOOOOOO:mad: If this has happened to you in your bait pond then this is probably why. I think you can get your bait in the traps until mid June then you may had best hold some ina stock tank for summer fishing.

Yeaterday i tried to trap rosy reds in a pond for restocking purposes and only caught 4-6 dozen adults. This was a small number but sufficient to stock a 2 acre pond since the females were ready to spawn. I estimate that there are enough females to spawn next month to produce at least 1,000 or more minnows to enter next Spring spawning season. The 1,000 minnows should contain at least 400 mature females in the Spring to generate ,conservatively 10,000 offspring in the first spawn(8 gallons) and they will spawn at least 5-6 times,therefore, an exponential number of minnows.

[QUOTE=cricket george;874520]Minnow,minnow in the pond, oh where have thou gone????:(:confused:

:):):)

Last weekend an acquaintance that supplies me with herbicides had a pond that needed stocked. I invited him to come with me to the 10 acre Canadian Co lake and catch some bass while the perch traps were doing their job. I had also placed a couple of minnow traps in another pond to harvest some rosie reds that I had stocked earlier this spring. The orange firerball was quickly slipping below the horizon when we poured 128 copper nosed bluegills into the new pond along with 4-5 dozen rosies. The rosies were ready to spawn again and one coppernosed appeared ready to spawn too. In 1 year this pond should have over 1 million perch and minnows in it and be ready for the bass. We will again venture to the 10 acre lake and harvest 25 approx 14" bass to transfer to the new pond. These bass will think they have hit the Golden Corral buffet line when they see forage available to them. We did well on our bass fishing and i caught a 12" hybrid sunfish that was as big as a large salad plate. The hybrid fought like a bass and took a 7" black worm. I easily lipped the fish and released it to be caught another day. Silly????? maybe, but then we have harvested another hybrid that weighted 1 pound 12 ounces. The state record is 1#14 ozs. I have seen,in hand, a hybrid that I think was 2 pounds. We released the fish because we did not have a scale with us that could confirm the weight. The fish will be caught again and be bigger. I would love to add this fish to my other Oklahoma state record fish a yellow bass/white bass hybrid which was caught in the Kiamichi River in the early 90's.:)

HMMMMM, I may have found the answer to where the minnows went in the heat of the summer. The answer was right in front of me and I missed it, I think. My problem,concern, question or whatever was thrown out to several ODWC biologists today to see if anyone had experienced this problem. Well glory be!! One of the fellas had this problem last week and found a solution. His bait pond water had similar conditions as mine and he added a pool noodle to float the trap at the surface and a weight to anchor it in place. He loaded the trap with minnows and went fishing. I will try this out and see if it works, it should. Hmmmm, isn't that similar to when the dingy lake water gets hot, like right now, and the crappie go super shallow because the deeper water may be anoxic (without oxygen). Yes, I may have learned something today too. I will experiment with my bait pond and report back soon. I am betting it will answer my question.

George, your expertise in this field never fails to amaze me...... :)

Stink .............:D Thank you. We may need to share a boat seat this Fall. I gotta place down South that is comfortable, warm when it is cold and cool when it is warm and a coupla steaks in the frig. A cord of seasoned hickory and oak to grill dem steaks on.:)

As you know I have good relations with acouple of top fisheries guys. One in particular, and we chat 7 days a week in the evening.

I looked at your construction site last night and it brought back memories. You might need a couple of days off to decompress and head South to Hugo and drag ripper with ya for a boys weekend out. I'll have the minnows!

Be good:)