Creating a Lake

[Bird]

I would be quite happy if the law gave permission to the land owner or his designated representatives to use lethal force to prevent trespassing on fenced land.

I don't think I'd actually do that but when I was just a kid living at the top of a hill just a mile or so northeast of Healdton, OK, one day I noticed a couple of young fellows on our place toward the bottom of the hill. So I walked out on the front porch with the 12 gauge. I saw that they were not looking toward the house and had not noticed me. So I very quickly fired one shot in the air, then lowered the barrel as if I were aiming at them. When they looked around and saw that shotgun aimed at them, they did leave the property at a high rate of speed.

 

[EddieWalker]

Less then a year after Columbine, my buddy, who owned some land in California had a confrontation with some tresspassers. When he told them to leave his land, they replied with somthing to the effect "what are you going to do if we don't leave?" His reply was along the lines of that he'd shoot them.

They left and called the cops on him for threatening them. He was arrested for terrorists threats and spent the weekend in jail. On Monday, the judge through out the charges.

Less the five years later, when we were crossing the border into Canada, the Canadians checked his record and the arrest showed up. He had to prove to the Canadians that he was never charged and wasn't a wanted criminal. How and why Canada feels it's their business is anybodies guess. But to top it off, they said that since the offence was less then five years old, they were not authorized at that level to admit him into the country. They did volunteer that in his situation, he'd probably win an apeal if he wanted to file one and take it to court. He declined and we didn't go hunting in Canada.

Eddie

 

[smfcpacfp]

Less the five years later, when we were crossing the border into Canada, the Canadians checked his record and the arrest showed up. He had to prove to the Canadians that he was never charged and wasn't a wanted criminal. How and why Canada feels it's their business is anybodies guess.

Eddie

Are you saying you don't understand why Canada would be concerned about the past criminal history of people entering their country? I guess it would be to avoid situations like 9/11. It is generally considered a priviledge to enter a foreign country, not a right.

I enjoyed your lake creation story and pictures.

 

[patrick_g]

I would be quite happy if the law gave permission to the land owner or his designated representatives to use lethal force to prevent trespassing on fenced land.

I don't think I'd actually do that

Do what, Bird? I said nothing about personally shooting anyone. I think there would be a terrific deterrent effect on trespassing which would reduce the likelihood of being in a position to be able to shoot anyone which would be the desired effect, severely reduced trespassing.

Pat

 

[EddieWalker]

Are you saying you don't understand why Canada would be concerned about the past criminal history of people entering their country? I guess it would be to avoid situations like 9/11. It is generally considered a priviledge to enter a foreign country, not a right.

I enjoyed your lake creation story and pictures.

Common sense would be that you are correct. Canada has the right and a duty to it's people to keep out undesirable people, which would include Americans with criminal records. I actually think that's a great idea and wish we did the same thing here.

The reality is that they have just invented a new tax, or fee, to enter the country. While my friend wasn't allowed to enter the country because his arrest was less then five years previous, I and others, who had criminal histories that had happened more then five years before were allowed to enter for a $200 CAN. The fee was to become "rehabilitated."

In my case, I was arrested for Drunk Driving in 1991. I had my court fax the border people my file showing that I wasn't a criminal any more and they said that I was fine to enter their country after paying my $200 fee. How does a mistake on my part ten years earlier relate to paying the Canadians $200 protect the citizens of that country?

It's a scam on their part and just another tax that they extort from those trying to enter their country. If it was really an issue, they wouldn't have allowe me to enter their country. $200 didn't change anything, make anybody safer or stop me from doing it again.

There was one guy who stole a Christmas tree in 1971 that was paying his rehabilitation fee, plus several others with Drunk Driving convictions older then mine. Everyone of us had to pay the Candians to enter, and then we were just fine to come on in. Of course, my friend, who was never charged with anything wasn't able to enter because he had been arrested. Not convicted or anything like that, just arrested and then let go.

Eddie

 

[patrick_g]

Everyone of us had to pay the Candians to enter, and then we were just fine to come on in. Of course, my friend, who was never charged with anything wasn't able to enter because he had been arrested. Not convicted or anything like that, just arrested and then let go.

Eddie

I'm not a Canadian and not defending them or their law but had a thought about what the basis for the fee might be.

Not talking about any individual but on average the statistics show that folks with convictions are more likely to get crosswise with the law than those who have no priors. IT would be entirely logical to charge the average cost of policing to the group of folks most likely to require extra Government expense than to everyone.

I don't know this to be the case but it would be logical and fair. Whatever it is it is not likely to be a fee charged because someone tossed a dart at a bunch of postit notes on the wall with ideas scribbled on them from a brainstorming for revenues meeting.

I think it would be a terrific thing if the US did it too. How many NAFTA trucks are driven by repeat offenders regarding equipment and or traffic violations. Lots of folks cross our borders all the time who have records and many are the ones who cost us taxpayers to apprehend, detain, incarcerate and or deport them again and again. Charge them at least the cost of catching and deporting them as an entry fee. Take the burden off of my taxes.

Pat

 

[rtdiggr]

Eddie i can't anwser to $200 fee, Maybe it is the cost of paper work. Your border does the same for people with records, if you have a drug record[no not me] no questions just go home, they don't want anything to do with you.
I have never had any problems at the border [going either way] but there are alot of stories [both ways] of being picked on.
Now that our money is around the same as the US the borders are packed. It is funny alot of people complain because of the wait and then complain they have to pay duty for $100's or $1000's they spend in another country. Lets face it, it also hurt's our economy when alot of people are going else way to buy items.

Oh yeah great pond by the way, if you are heading this way you can help me with my pond........when i get to it.

Shane

 

[rlk]

My plan for bass was to wait until next fall and buy a bunch from my fish supplier, but that may have changed. I've been getting bass from my wifes step dad, who is a die hard fisherman. When he catches a bass that's over two pounds, he gives me a call and I meet him to get it. Then I bring it home and let it go in Lake Marabou.
Eddie

Eddie, during 2003 when I purchased the fish to stock my pond, I asked my fish supplier about getting large fish from another pond and putting them into my pond. He did not like this, because of the likelyhood of introducing diseases from the other pond into your pond.

If your pond receives water from a river or large creek, this may not be a problem. My pond only gets runoff from surrounding forests and pastures, so I decided to not take a chance on introducing fish from another pond.

You could call your fish supplier and ask him his throughts.

Bob

 

[Bird]

Bob, perhaps that's the reason state law in Texas prohibits putting a fish into any public waters other than the water it was caught in. In other words, as far as I know, there's nothing wrong with Eddie putting those bass into his private lake or pond, but it is illegal to put one into a public lake that was caught somewhere else.

 

[EddieWalker]

... I asked my fish supplier about getting large fish from another pond and putting them into my pond. He did not like this, because of the likelyhood of introducing diseases from the other pond into your pond.

Bob,

The bass are coming from two different private ponds that were both supplied from Tyler Fish Farms. They stocked them, along with a third pond that my Father In Law fishes. So far, he's only been fishing the two ponds, but I'll take fish from the third one also if and when he catches some from there.

There is always the chance that those fish have something that I don't want. But honestly, with the bullhead catfish appearing out of nowhere, I'm more concerned with what I'll end up with in there from Mother Nature, then from those ponds the bass are coming from.

I think every fish supplier will caution against stocking with free fish. It's bad business for them and hard to make a profit when I'm not buying their product. If I didn't know anything about those bass or where they came from,then I wouldn't do it.

I've turned down allot of catfish, bluegill, sunfish, crappy and "perch" from people who want to help out. My excuse is the same as you mentioned. I tell them that I don't know the history of those fish and I don't want to risk introducing somthing into my pond that will cause the other fish to get sick and die off.

Eddie

 

[patrick_g]

You could call your fish supplier and ask him his throughts.

Bob

It would be in interesting test of his profit motive and integrity.

Assuming purchased fish to always be absolutely disease and parasite free (not always true) then there is less risk stocking with "store bought" fish. However if you have a resident population of fish that you have conducted significant sampling of (caught lots of them over a period of time) and they were always strong and healthy in appearance (fat, well colored, and put up a decent fight) then the risk may be judged to be acceptable.

Lets consider that you have a pond, we'll call it pond A. You stock it with store bought fish and they thrive for years. You have pond B and want to stock it. Do you buy from the hatchery or use some from pond A to stock B. Why are new fish from the hatchery so much better than the contents of pond A which are hatchery fish and their offspring?

How long can you have hatchery fish in a pond before they are inferior to new hatchery fish? If "used to be" hatchery fish in pond A are not "safe" to put in pond B then are they desirable to keep in pond A? If they aren't good enough for pond B maybe they aren't good enough for pond A either and should all be killed out with rotenone and replaced with new hatchery fish. Then we need to know how long we can "safely" keep fish in a pond before we kill them all and start over...

OK, I took this slightly to excess to make a point. Under good circumstances hatchery fish are probably parasite and disease free. After being placed in a pond they might get parasites and disease. For me, I'm willing to swap some fish between and among my 12 ponds if they seem to be good healthy specimens. I think the risk is acceptable. There is however some risk and probably more than getting disease or parasites in hatchery fish. Of course as soon as hatchery fish are planted they are subject to contamination and are soon little or no better than 2nd, 3rd, or nth generation fish.

My ponds are subject to overflow from one to another in the majority of cases. This tends to wash fry from one pond to another so even if I don't do it nature does. One of my isolated ponds overflowed and little 3/4 to 1 1/2 inch fish by the thousands were swimming out in a pasture in 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch of water over 100 feet from their home pond. Many of them made it 200 feet or so to a pond lower in elevation. I'm having to change my catfish feeding since my monoculture catfish pond got contaminated with perch.

I like to stock "Shell Crackers" (Redear Sunfish) as they preferentially eat snails, which figure into the life cycle of some of the parasitic worms, and then eat other things after they eat the snails. They interrupt the life cycle of the parasites which require the aquatic snails to complete their lifecycle. These parasitic worms are more of a real danger than other disease in my experience wlth these ponds. Fish with worms don't grow as fast, fill out as nice, or exhibit all the qualities of a nice healthy fish as much as those without. Did I mention shell crackers?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with stocking from a hatchery. It can be convenient, it isn't all that expensive (for small fish), and there is low risk of disease and parasites. Being selective and careful and stocking from your own sources is slightly more risky but enables you to select breeding stock with greater assurance and get way ahead in having a breeding population. It is much cheaper (if nothing goes wrong) and may be simpler and more fun.

In my case only 6 of my 12 ponds are safe from getting fish from upstream and the other 6 get stocked by upstream ponds during overflow events whether I intervene or not. This has been going on for decades in some of them as I only built 3 of the ponds myself and the rest have been around for varying lengths of time up to 25 years or more. So far there has been no problem with propagating diseases that I know of and get compliments on how big, fat, feisty, and well colored my fish are. Your mileage may vary! Risk assessment is often a topic of heated debate. I know there is risk but believe based on experience and analysis that it is acceptable and that the worst case event would still be tolerable and relatively easy to recover from in my situation.

Pat

 

[jinman]

I have never had any problems at the border [going either way] but there are alot of stories [both ways] of being picked on.
Shane

Shane, I have to agree with you. I work for a Canadian-owned company. Last week, we were having three managers from Montreal come to Dallas to meet with some managers here and learn about our processes in the hope of creating company-wide standards. One of those managers has been a resident of Canada for only 10 years since he immigrated from Romania. Just after immigrating, he attended a university in the US and held a green card to be able to work while in school.

Last week, despite having the same passport and credentials as his fellow travelers, he was not allowed to enter the US because he did not have his green card in his possession. He called home to have his girlfriend bring the card to him and she had an accident on the way to the airport, wrecking his car. With this turn of events and multiple delays and flight cancellations, he arrived in Dallas 24 hours later with no baggage.

I'm not sure which was the worst for him, U.S. Customs or the airlines. I do know that the cost to my company in time and productivity was pretty high for that event. All the managers also said that they had been asked by U.S. Customs if they had ever been arrested or had a criminal record. I'm not sure what would have happened if they had any record.

So while I don't know the exact details of the law or procedures, this anecdotal evidence does show that there are less than ideal circumstances when traveling into the U.S. from Canada.

 

[EddieWalker]

Pat,

You bing up another point that I failed to make. I don't know how the fish farm controls or handles inbreeding. I don't know if it matters either considering that sooner or later, a given pond will have fish that must be related to each other to some degree.

Since the two ponds that I'm getting my bass from were both stocked from the same supplier, along with the third pond that I'm sure I'll get some fish from sometime soon, I'm unsure if there is genetic diversity or not?

I know that in the past year, all three ponds have prduced 5 to 8 pound bass. Two of the ponds are allot smaller then mine, and one is allot bigger.

In my little imagination, I'm thinking that having three sources of fish might give me more variety in the gene pool. By only keeping the larger fish, my odds increase that they,and their offspring, will grow to become big fish.

Long term, I still might buy some fish from Tyler Fish Farms and add to my population with some new genetics. My bluegill are mixed with thousands from Tyler Fish Farms from this year, and hundreds from my small pond that I bought from Tyler Fish Farms two years ago.

If I bought a few hundred bluegill in a few years and added them to what I currently have, I might improve the overall health of the entire pond. I'd also do the same with the bass. I should have several spawns with a large variety of ages and sizes in there. Then if I add a few hundred more from my supplier, I should add more diversity to my bass.

Does this make sense?

Eddie

 

[patrick_g]

Pat, Does this make sense?

Eddie

Sure Eddie, It makes sense to me if that is a comfort.

Selectively putting in known good performing fish will help your genetics. You are right about everybody in the pond being everybody's cousin before long but it doesn't seem to hurt the fish on my place. Some of the ponds are over 25 years old and haven't been stocked (on purpose or to my knowledge) since the initial stocking. Of course there is down stream overflow "natural" stocking in really wet years.

If my concern for genetic diversity were significantly more of an issue to me than it is now I would probably want to put a few (10-20) hatchery or other reliable source fish (fingerings) into each pond every 3 years or so. I'd question the hatchery about their breeding stock and their genetic diversity and consider using different hatcheries in rotation if I wasn't overwhelmingly convinced I was getting "fresh" genetics from the one hatchery.

This program would insure genetic diversity. It doesn't take massive numbers of new fish to impact your genetics. Superior fish from whatever source will tend to out propagate the marginal ones (your own miniature Darwinian experiment)

I just got a call this morning from my wife's BIL and months later he is still raving about our little catfishing outing, the first fish taken from my new catfish pond.

Pat

 

[patrick_g]

So while I don't know the exact details of the law or procedures, this anecdotal evidence does show that there are less than ideal circumstances when traveling into the U.S. from Canada.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It isn't just Canada to the US or US to Canada, it is travel in general, post 9-11.

It is the price we pay to pretend that our security is greatly enhanced. Security has been enhanced but hasn't been improved as much as hassle has been enhanced.

The bad guys get it easy. Trying to be vigilant and prohibit the bad guys from doing bad is not easy at all and lots of inconvenience results.

Welcome to the future!!!!

Pat

 

[rtdiggr]

So while I don't know the exact details of the law or procedures, this anecdotal evidence does show that there are less than ideal circumstances when traveling into the U.S. from Canada.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It isn't just Canada to the US or US to Canada, it is travel in general, post 9-11.

It is the price we pay to pretend that our security is greatly enhanced. Security has been enhanced but hasn't been improved as much as hassle has been enhanced.

The bad guys get it easy. Trying to be vigilant and prohibit the bad guys from doing bad is not easy at all and lots of inconvenience results.

Welcome to the future!!!!

Pat

Can't we all just get along
i know security needs to be tight, but it does seem sometimes they are tough on the wrong people.

Shane

 

[patrick_g]

Can't we all just get along
i know security needs to be tight, but it does seem sometimes they are tough on the wrong people.

Shane

Therein lies the problem. It is hard to impossible to know who the right and wrong people are so they have to have rules which ultimately are not right in all situations and cause many hassles for folks who are harmless. It is unfortunate but you can't have both easy borders and security.

I'd just love it if we could all get along but a few bad actors make it tough for the rest of us.

I'd be happy to see the US and Canada negotiate a common border policy and trust each other to appropriately police it. If that were possible then the Canadian/US border crossing policy could be relaxed and revert to just customs type stuff, tarrifs, firearms, anjd such. If the US could satisfy Canada that we wouldn't let anyone into the US that they would exclude then they don't need to check at the US/Canada border. Likewise if Canada could satisfy the US that they wouldn't let anyone in that the US wouldn't then te US wouldn't have to check folks coming from Canada.

We don't check folks very stringently when they are traveling from Indiana to Illinois or between most other states (California excepted.) Loosening our common border would free up manpower and funds for each country to tighten its external borders and international airports.

I'm not suggesting that the US and Canada become one country but if we were one country we wouldn't have a border across the middle of it with stringent checks. So if we could trust and cooperate with each other and have external border regulations and security procedures that met each others requirements we wouldn't need much of a border check operationi between us.

In Mexico there are Mexican army checkpoints at the border between, for example, Baja California Norte and Sur (northern Baja and southern Baja) as well as at random locations which are moved around to avoid having the general population know where to expect them. These are serious checkpoints. They have spike strips across the road, the troops are armed with automatic weapons, they have little circular positions with sand bags which have you in a crossfire where you stop and a "safety" position further ahead in both directions for folks who decide to turn around and make a run for it or try to crash through the checkpoint.

I don't know about the average motorist but all these automatic weapons carried by troops who look to average under 20 years old, makes me nervous. They do search your car, truck, camper, or motorhome and you DO COOPERATE.

I only mention this internal example from Mexico to contrast it with the US Canadian border and show that in the words of Shakespeare, "I think he doth protest overmuch." Said another way, "you ain't seen s--t, yet" wait till some bozo comes to the US via Canada and sets off a dirty bomb or some such. Then you'll see some serious security. Right now it is a minor hassle, as much for show as effect. It can be ratcheted up quite a bit.

Pat

 

[EddieWalker]

My father in law called me today to see if I wanted to go fishing with him for some bass to put into Lake Marabou. I was gonna put away some Christmas stuff, but this sounded like a much better idea!!

It was a beautiful day with clear skies and temps in the low 60's. Gotta Love Texas!!!

Larry cought three bass that weighed 4 pounds today, plus a few more down to one pound. Mine were in the 2 pound range.

When I got home, Steph wanted to see them and was waiting for me in the driveway. It wasn't too hard to talk her into releasing them into Lake Marabou. In fact, it was more exciting seeing her let them go then it was to catch them!!!!!!!

Eddie

 

[TBDonnelly]

Eddie,

I've heard it's a good luck tradition to kiss the fish before releasing them.
Just wondered if Steph followed this tradition.

Don

 

[jinman]

Eddie, those are some PRETTY bass. What a nice catch! My neighbor's son was fishing in our lake yesterday and caught three big bass off the dock. I was busy taking down Christmas decorations. I don't think I had nearly as much fun.

Do you think the bass will have enough to eat? As big as they are, they will probably be the top predators in your lake.