Creating a Lake

[have_blue]

I am amazed that some of my ponds are muddy all the time, full or nearly empty. Others are only muddy when overflowed into by muddy ponds or get a lot of runoff and then they clear up rather quickly.
Pat

Pat,

It's pretty frustrating that my neighbor's pond, only 400' away from mine, is clear while mine is muddy. I guess I should just chalk it up to 1 of the mysteries of nature.

 

[patrick_g]

Pat,

It's pretty frustrating that my neighbor's pond, only 400' away from mine, is clear while mine is muddy. I guess I should just chalk it up to 1 of the mysteries of nature.

Bob, What is a guy named Bob doing in the heart of Cajun Country? Is that your nom de plume, a handle assigned by witness protection, you're not a local, or what???

Bob, I certainly sympathize with you. I haven't been able to decode the mystery of adjacent ponds with vastly different clarity characteristics. I have 7 pretty clear ponds and 3 muddy ones. Of course, the luck of the draw makes two out of the 3 ponds in the back yard the largest muddy ones. Of the two big muddy ones, one has been there for decades and I built the other about 4 years ago, getting much of the dirt for the dam from the excavation I did to get a walk-out basement.

The third muddy pond is fairly small (100x250ft) and is not in sight of the house. Another pond, slightly smaller is clear all the time. It would be worth a few K$ to me if I could have the ponds nearest the house stay clear all the time (and I don't mean by constantly adding chemicals as they overflow.)

I guess while you have your chalk out, mark mine up as mysteries of nature as well.

Pat

 

[Cacinok]

after catching up w/ my reading of this thread, i'm thinking that there needs to be an index. way too much good info in the thread about various and sundry topics.

 

[john_bud]

Patrick,

Yeah, it's been years since I've dealt with flocculants. We used them to drop out suspended product in effluent streams. The EPA didn't want the stuff in the pipe, the WWT people didn't want to deal with it and we didn't want to lose product! The guys on the production area would "accidentally" spill some of the powder in high traffic areas and wait for a rain. It would turn to the slipperyest stuff you have ever seen and talk about hard to get off! A fire hose could spray it and it would still be slick.

On your ponds, have you measured the pH of the water in each pond? That might give you a clue ...

The gypsum and other ionic flocculants don't change the charge of the water. They provide the opposite charged particulates as the stuff that is in suspension. Opposite charges attract and the particles clump or "floc" together into something that is large enough to settle out.

 

[have_blue]

Patrick,

The gypsum and other ionic flocculants don't change the charge of the water. They provide the opposite charged particulates as the stuff that is in suspension. Opposite charges attract and the particles clump or "floc" together into something that is large enough to settle out.

John,

I stand corrected!

 

[patrick_g]

John and Bob, Thanks to you both for your suggestions. I haven't measured the pH in any of the ponds. I guess I'm lazy or something but since most of the ponds are on seasonal creeks and the overflow of one goes directly into the next in some cases I thought the water woild be pretty similar. We have 3 ponds in our yard. Two are always muddy and the third (downstream of the other two) clears up right away after the muddy overflow quits. The drain pipe of each of the "upper" ponds dumps directly into the next pond in the chain with no intervening creek.

I am not only lazy but curious and curious always trumps lazy so I will be measuring the pH of all 10 ponds to see if there is any trend to be noticed. I suppose measuring while the usually clear ponds are muddy and again after they clear would be good.

Pat

 

[EddieWalker]

My small 3/4 acre pond was stocked last year and it's full of fathead minnows, copper nose bluegill and channel catfish. The catfish are pretty easy to catch with cheese on a hook. The minnows fill up the minnow trap almost every day, but the bluegill are a different story. We've only cought about a dozen or so of them with the pole and none in the minnow trap.

Pat mentioned siening for minnows, which I don't have any experience doing, but it sounded like fun. I bought a 4 ft by 20 foot sien net online a month ago, but today was the first time to use it.

Steph's step dad, Larrry, was here and we got to talking about giving it a try. He'd done the siening thing with poles as a kid, but never with a bigger net like I'd bought.

I tied a rope to his end and he stood on the dock while I waded out into the pond. Our fist pass netted a dozen or so minnows. We tried again and again. It took some practice, but after awhile, we found the hiding spot for the year old bluegills. We also realized that half the minnows in the net were actually bably bluegill. They have spawned in the small pond and are everywhere!!!

It didn't matter where we draged the net, we cought baby bluegill. Mostly we let them go while working on the bigger ones. Some would jump out of the net, others would work there way to the end and escape. To stop this, Alissa got in the water with us and would pick up the side of the net close to Larry.

I was able to release two dozen of the big bluegill, plus about 200 of the baby's and another hundred or so minnows in Lake Marabou. It was a fun way to spend a couple hours on a warm Sunday afternoon!!!

One suprise was the monster. At first we thought it might have been a baby crawdad, but the tail and head are alll wrong. Anybody know what the "monster" is?

Thanks,
Eddie

 

[pat32rf]

So, do those snapping turtles really taste like chicken?
I'd check with Pond Boss about muddy water, I have the feeling that there are many reasons and just as many cures. I have a small pond out back that is clear every spring but as the water level goes down over the summer and the fish become more concentrated gets muddy from them stirring it up.
I used to have a problem with kids running their ATVs thru it and stirring up the mud until I dug a couple of 12' deep holes out in the middle

 

[john_bud]

I don't "know", but my guess is it's a dragonfly nymph.

Anybody else got a guess? (or maybe even some knowledge?)

jb

 

[patrick_g]

I don't "know", but my guess is it's a dragonfly nymph.

Anybody else got a guess? (or maybe even some knowledge?)

jb

Doesn't look like the dragon fly nymphs that I have seen but I haven't seen them all.

Seriously, you can Google on dragonfly nymphs and the ones I looked at there are what I recall seeing. Not so long by quite a margin. The dragonfly nymphs are not so long for their thickness. They often crawl up out of the water on the stems of plants and split open to release the metamorphosed occupant leaving behind a really ungly looking criter (totally hollow) hanging onto the plant.

Pat

 

[MarkV]

Eddie that is great that your Blue Gill spawned this year. Looks like you have a forage base starting that would let you add Large Mouth Bass this fall if you want them in the pond. Our bass and Bream are both spawning this time of year.

MarkV

 

[EddieWalker]

Dragonfly nymph?

This is a new one for me, so I googled it and got me a little education on dragonfly's. I had no idea of how they come about, but never even considered that they live in the water before turning into dragon flies!!!!

None of the pictures I saw were an exact match to what we cought, but they are close enough to show me that's what it was. Weird little creature, but kind of cool too.

Thank you.


Mark,

We're very exited about the bluegill spawn. We looked for it last year, but never saw any small ones, so this is probably our first time. The shere numbers of them in the small pond is kind of amazing. We couldnt' go four feet with that net without catching half a dozen to two dozen of them.

My plan for the bass is to get the lake stocked with feeder fish to the point they have had multiple spawns. That's the minnows and bluegill. With a solid food base that is self sustaining, I'll be able to put the bass in and know they will grow fast and healthy.

I'll start stocking the bass next year, either late spring or early summer.

Eddie

 

[jinman]

Eddie, the seine we used to have was at least 50' long. I was surprised to see yours was just 20'. We would roll the seine up on two end poles and just unroll what we needed if we couldn't stretch out all the 50'. I'm sure you lost a lot of fish and minnows by them swimming around the end of the net, but it sounds like you did just fine.

The way we used to seine is that one person would stand near the shore and the other would go straight out with the seine and then walk in an arc toward the shore. I'm not sure if that's the standard way, but we had willow trees along the bank and it was impossible to string the seine out along the shore and make a full arc.

 

[Bird]

I thought all seines had floats along the top to keep the the top at the water's surface so fish couldn't go over it without jumping. And I think nearly everyone I ever saw using one would have one person walking along the bank, or barely in the edge of the water and the other person walking as far out as possible, depending on depth of the water and height of the net. Then, after a short distance, the person at the bank would stop and the one out in the water would circle ahead to the bank and they'd drag everything out onto the bank. They were usually looking for bait, whether minnows or crawfish.

 

[patrick_g]

Bird, Floats (used to be cork) were at the top and lead weights on the bottom to hold it down so it didn't bag so much from resistance of the water flowing through. I've seen several wash tubs of keeper sized fish removed from one small muddy stock watering pond to support a fish fry for the friends and neighbors. The turtles caught were sailed Frisbee style into the pig lot. Lots of good breeding stock of various species could be seen jumping over the top of the net (crappie, bluegill, perch, and bass.)

We also had a minnow seine that was rectangular. You put it on the end of a strong pole and dipped it down in the water. The heavy gauge square wire hoop around the seine sunk it pretty well. You then pull it up and catch minnows. The cloth was not stretched tightly but allowed to bag to form a pocket when you pulled it up.

Pat

 

[Bird]

Yep, that sounds like the kind I used to see used when I was a kid. Of course, in more recent years when I went to visit my parents at Port Aransas, Dad used a casting net to catch shrimp and/or mullet and mud minnows for us to use as bait. Most folks need a little practice to learn to use one of those well, but I think if I were Eddie, that's what I'd get now.

 

[patrick_g]

Bird, Years ago when I was sailing up the west coast of Mexico from Acapulco to San Diego we stopped at Zihuatanejo (yachties frequently call it ZEEWhat) where young boys were casting nets under the concrete pier there to support small charter boat operations. They had gill nets in a roughly circular shape, woven of mono filament fishing line. The nets were maybe 6 ft in diameter with a mono filament line running to the center of the net. There were weights around the periphery. The line running to the center of the net was coiled up on a DIY open faced spinning reel (beer can.)

They were well practiced in tossing the net out with a flick of the wrist that sent the weights on the outside spinning in a circle held out by centrifugal force. The nets hit the water flat and sank quickly due to the lead weights. The sides of the net went down fast and any fish under the net got caught when they tried to swim out through the net. The fisherman wound up the string on the beer can, pulled in the laden net and pulled out the fish. Very effective. One set of kids would go under the pier and wave their arms so that their shadow would frighten the fish hiding under the pier. The fish would dart out from under the pier and SHAZAM the other kids would cast their nets.

This looked like fun and an efficient catching process. It wasn't just a game as they were filling buckets with fish and taking them home to mamasita. These preteens were feeding their families.

I think a similar net but finer mesh with a "purse string" around the periphery should work wonders. You'd spin-toss it out flat onto the surface, let it sink a bit and then pull the purse string capturing any enclosed fish larger than your mesh size.

Pat

 

[Bird]

That's exactly what I'm talking about Pat. Down on the coast, I think all the stores that sell fishing equipment sell those nets, just as Bass Pro sells these. Instead of a reel (or beer can) the line has a loop in the end that you attach to your wrist so once the weights and net settle to the bottom, you already have the line in your hand to start pulling it in. It pulls the weights to the middle, then up.

 

[patrick_g]

Bird, I guess that shows my ignorance, I had never seen nets like those before. They were strictly DIY from mono filament and in keeping with frugality the empty beer can (Tecate or Dos Equis) was the open Faced spinning reel. When they threw their nets they turned the end of the can toward the net so the line would pay out open faced reel style, much further than a line on your wrist would be practical.

Pat

 

[Bird]

so the line would pay out open faced reel style, much further than a line on your wrist would be practical.

Pat, I don't remember the exact length of the lines, but they were long enough to reach as far as I could throw the net. Dad had two different nets; different diameter and different mesh. And he was better at throwing those things than I was. Of course I just attribute that to the fact that he'd had a lot more practice. Naturally, they could certainly be used to catch fish for food, but we only used them in shallow water for shrimp and minnows for bait and threw back the crabs and any fish not suitable for bait.