Read Estate agents know the key to selling rural property is the listing of a pond or potential pond sites. As a homesteader, we want a pond for various reasons such as, a domestic water source, irrigation or livestock water, recreation, fire protection, and for natural tranquility and beauty. Our family has been raising fish since the 1950’s with a commercial fish permit from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources through the 1990’s. I was just a kid when I started helping my dad with his fish business on our farm.
I suggest you go online and download either, or both, of these handbooks.
Ohio Pond Management Handbook by Ohio State Extension
Ohio Pond Management Handbook by ODNR – Division of Wildlife
They are similar, however each has some different ideas and concepts you may use.
In this session, I will be sharing some ideas not included in these handbooks. I have learned a lot in the last 60 years! I will not be covering pond construction – that will come later.
Fish Stocking
Today, you have 2 sources to obtain fish for stocking your pond. You can purchase fish from a private fish hatchery or you can catch the fish from another pond and release them into your pond. I use both methods for managing our ponds, however the catch and release method is only from one pond on our property to another pond on the property. Transporting fish during warm temperatures is very stressful on the fish and requires aeration.
Stocking a pond can be costly: The larger the fish, the more they cost. To find a price list to give you an idea what fish cost, check out Fender’s Fish Hatchery at Baltic, Ohio. www.fendersfishhatching.com The price sticker shock causes pond owners to protect their pond in such a way to cause fish population problems later. Fish should be caught and released for the first 2 years after stocking with limited harvesting the 3rd year. Preventing fishing or never harvesting the fish only hurts the pond due to overpopulation or the dominance of one species over another.
You can work with the fish hatchery staff to purchase a mix of fish species in assorted sizes to get your pond thriving. For example, Fender’s Fish Hatchery has several packages with 7 varieties of fish for a 1-acre pond. The packages include a Pond Management book to help you.
The Pond Management booklets which I linked to above will also give you some recommendations about stocking. You can decide which species you wish to have in your pond and purchase the fish individually. I have done this when restocking our ponds/lakes.
Alternately, over the years my dad came up with a less expensive way to stock ponds. When the pond is first built or being refilled, July, August, September are the best months, he would stock 10 pounds of fathead minnows at least per acre. He did this when the pond had 3 feet of water.
In the following Spring, he would stock 25 – 35 of the 8 – 10” largemouth bass per acre and 50 – 75 of the 5 – 6” bluegills per acre.
His stocking / management theory was that the fathead minnows start spawning (reproducing and laying eggs) within 4 weeks after initially stocking the pond and would continue to spawn at least two more times before Fall. The minnows will start spawning again early in the Spring. (Please, don’t get minnows from a creek – you will introduce a variety of undesirable species to your pond.)
Shiner minnows are cheaper but don’t reproduce as much as fatheads. When you stock the bass and bluegill in April or May there will be an abundant food supply. The bass should spawn at 60° F and the bluegills start spawning at 65°F (at 16” below the surface of the pond). Their reproduction thus adds to the food supply.
The bass will grow at least 4” the first year. When wildlife biologists checked the ponds that Dad had stocked using this method, they couldn’t believe how well the fish did. Dad only stocked catfish if the pond owners planned on fishing for them. (Don’t stock your ponds with bullhead catfish – they will take over your pond and are hard to kill. I once found bullheads buried alive in the bottom mud of a pond that had been drained for 2 years due to dam failure!)
With my dad’s method, bass and bluegills can be harvested in limited numbers during the second year.
Fish Feeding
The more feed available, the more the fish will eat and chase your hook. Commercial fish feed is good to promote catfish and bluegill growth. Largemouth bass may nibble at the feed but they are around the fish feeder for the small forage – fish dinner. Place fish feeders near structures, especially off docks. Bluegills are territorial and will stay close to the feeders even on large lakes (Lake Erie).
If you are not interested in purchased fish feed, I would suggest 2 other methods:
1. The old-time feeder was roadkill. Put a stake in about 3 feet of water with 2 feet above the water and hang a dead animal (roadkill) in an onion sack. It’s best to wet the sack first. The flies will lay eggs in the carcass. The maggots will drop into the water. This will last 4 weeks. It’s a good food source for the fish, but it can be smelly.
2. Another way is to use a bug zapper. Remove the bottom tray and hang it over the pond. You can purchase bug-light feeders – they are approximately $275 – which you mount on a dockside post, over the water. The fish feast on the fallen bugs. Check on line for bug-light feeders.
Weed Control
Beware of the methods you use to control aquatic weeds – not only what they kill but what are the residual effects.
Does your pond have an overflow? The water you treat with chemicals goes downstream to other landowners who may be using the water for domestic livestock or farm use; your actions may cause them problems. Also, do the chemicals you use have a tendency to have residual build-up? (Copper sulfate can cause spawning problems.)
Controlling weeds with chemicals can also cause oxygen depletion from decaying and dying weeds. Timing and water temperature are extremely important. An old-time biological control measure was to stake barley straw bales in 18” of water around the shoreline. Other straws work, but not as well. The barley straw needs to be put in the water between early May and mid-June. The barley straw creates a plankton bloom which shades out the sunlight and provides food for the fish. I recommend pond aeration if you try this method.
Another biological weed control is using ‘grass carp’, or white amur. These are purchased from a fish hatchery. Don’t overstock the pond with the carp and make sure they can’t go over the overflow.
Oxygen Depletion
A healthy pond has about 10ppm of oxygen in the top thermo-layer. During the hot summer, oxygen levels drop and are at their lowest levels about ½ hour before sunrise – they drop as low as 2ppm – a level which can cause the fish to die. Ponds with lots of weeds produce O2 during the day but use O2 at night during respiration. If the water also has decaying plants, the pond will be depleting its oxygen before daylight.
This is a healthy pond with few weeds. Two small islands provide habitat for geese, ducks, and other water fowl. The trees around the pond provide shade, making for some good fishing.
The larger fish die first, they come to the top where birds and raccoons get them. Later in the morning, the dead fish will sink to the bottom. Therefore, you may never know you had a fish kill because you didn’t see any dead fish, but you still can see small minnow-size fish. You can purchase bottom type of aeration systems, you can install a fountain in the pond, or use number of other devices to stir and aerate the water. Some pond owners create a rock waterfall and use a small electric motor to pump the water over the rocks, allowing the water to absorb O2 as it splashes over the rocks. In the pond construction session, I will describe how to increase the O2 levels using pond design.
Ponds have 3 thermo-layers. The top layer has the most oxygen, the 2nd layer (cooler water below the surface layer) has less oxygen and is where the fish travel and rest. They feed in the top layer. The bottom layer (the coldest layer of water) is very low in oxygen and most fish only rest in this zone. There is no real fish growth in the bottom layer. By adding bottom aeration, the top 2 layer depths can be increased, producing more fish growth. The normal pond has about 250 pounds of fish per acre, whereas; a pond with continuous aeration can support up to 350 pounds.
Pond Problems
1. Leaky ponds – the Pond Management Handbooks explain how to solve the leaky pond by draining the pond, adding clay, and then working it in to the soil. Alternately, you can install a pond liner. With either of these methods, the work will be done during the summer, so you won’t have the pond for at least 1 year. Old timers sealed pond leaks by fencing livestock in the pond area between the shore bank and the water level. Swine do a great job of rooting in the mud and sealing the leak. Cattle don’t root, so all their work is done with their feet.
I visited a ranch in Missouri that didn’t have enough clay to seal the pond bottom. The rancher allowed the cows to wade into the 1 ½ acre pond to drink. Every year the cattle stamping in the mud sealed about 2 feet of the pond and in 10 years he had a 12 ft deep pond. He then fenced the cattle out and used a downstream watering system.
2. Muskrats – If you have a muskrat problem, contact your game protector and get permission to trap them out. A great trapping idea is to use a floating trapping platform. Look on-line for Floating Muskrat Trapping. Locate floats in about 18” of water, secure the trap ring to the bottom side of the float, set the leg hold trap near a spike holding an apple. You should be able to set two or more traps per float. The muskrats by nature love to climb on things to eat. Once in the trap, the muskrats dive into the water for safety and drowns.
3. Geese Problems – Geese look beautiful, but leave a real mess of manure on the shoreline. You can put up stakes with string running between them. Put silver and red ribbons (foil) on the string. The wind blowing will cause the ribbon to twist and turn, keeping the geese away. Try to keep the geese from nesting on your pond. You can’t touch the nest but some people use a laser pointer to discourage geese nesting.
4. Eliminate or Reducing Fish Population – We wanted to remove all fish from a small strip-pit pond so we could use the it to raise fathead minnows. We use a chemical called Rotenone, a plant-based pesticide used for fish removal, http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/pyrethrins-ziram/rotenone-ext.html
In the pond. The rotenone essentially forms a coating over the fish’s gills and they can’t get oxygen. The fish come to the surface and will suffocate. Since we had nice bass in this pond, we netted out the bass and rinsed them off twice in clear water, then placed the fish in an aeration tank. We only lost 1 of the over 250 bass we retrieved from the pond. Rotenone can be used in July – September for shoreline population control. Using a boat, go about 15 feet from the shore with the wind blowing inward and pour a small wall of rotenone from bank to bank. It works great in heavy aquatic plant shoreline area. The larger fish usually aren’t there. You can rescue any species that you want to keep while eliminating a number of stunted fish, usually bluegills.
Remember a healthy one-acre pond should have 300 man hours of fishing per year. Even though my lake is 6.5 acres, I know my wife wouldn’t be thrilled with me if I spent 2100 hours fishing. My grandsons are happy to help me with this job!
The next Master Class will dive into Pond Construction.
Happy Fishing,
Bob
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