Pond Advice

[N80]

I have an 8 acre pond. I'd like to improve it and make it better for fishing and general use. I have very little money to put towards it though. I'll describe the situation and see if any of you wise folk have any advice for me.

The pond is probably fifty years old and was built on a creek in a valley by the government as part of a watershed system. There is a very large dam on one end, it is about 150 yards long and maybe 15-20 feet above the water. There is a cement spillway near the dam. There is no obvious way to adjust the water level with the spillway. At the other end, the narrow end, it is fed by a creek that often runs dry for long speels in the summer. So sometimes there is little flow in and little flow out. Yet, 2-4 times a year if we get a good heavy rain, it will rise 10 feet easy.

Normally I'd guess it may be around 20 feet deep at the dam, but most of the rest of the lake is quite shallow, probably less than 8 feet except in the creek channel where it is a little deeper. This is because it is silting in, especially at the creek end.

We get some good sized bream out of it, rarely a crappy and some small bass, rarely over 2 pounds. Fishing pressure is very light. It used to get poached a lot, but not in the last few years.

The county used to maintain the dam and the watershed, but that agency is no longer funded.

Presently, there is about two feet of fine silt on the bottom and there is a rather large healthy crop of some kind of lush green bushy 'sea weed' of some sort that comes all the way to the surface.

Obviously it probably needs to be drained, dried and bulldozed out and a new spillway with water level adjustment installed. But I'm not likely to have that kind of money in a long time, probably ever.

So what can I do without spending thousands of dollars to make it better for fishing. I'd spend the money on stock, but I'm assuming all the weed is a sign that something is out of whack and I'm assuming I need to do something about the condition of the pond before re-stocking it.

Without knowing much about this sort of thing it kind of looks hopeless to me.

Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated.

 

[lhfarm]

Go to Pond Boss Magazine Home Page! and click on Ask the Boss. These guys know ponds and provide the type of good advice you find here.

Good luck,

 

[MarkV]

George I would also suggest Pond Boss as a good source to ask your questions. There are a good number of pond management people that share their expertise on that forum.

We have a 5 acre pond that sounds to be similar to yours. The first thing you will be asked at Pond Boss is what are your goals for the pond? Do you want trophy Bass or Bream or just general fishing. Each has its own approach when it comes to management. Do be aware that ponds can be like tractors and easy to spend money on.

Here is the short version of what a pond management pro told us about our fish population and ours sounds close to yours. Good fishing is all about balance between predator (Bass) and forage fish (Bream). If you are catching good size Bream you have the base for good forage. If all the Bass you catch are 14” and under in size, weighing 11/2 to 2 pounds they are most likely stunted from over population and too much competition for forage. One sign is if you see good size Bream but very few 3” or under. This is pretty common in our Southern ponds. We were advised to fish out 20 lbs. of Bass in the 11 to 13” size per surface acre to bring down the Bass population for a better balance. Also we release all Bream until we reach a better balance. Supplementing the Bream with feed is another thing we do to help the forage population. The feed is not that expensive and it is fun to watch the Bream go nuts when you throw out food. I don’t have Crappie but understand they can hurt your balance in a pond of that size and are better suited for larger bodies of water. Be aware that this is a multi year project so don’t expect results over night.

The weeds you have are not necessarily the worst thing in the world. They indicate that the pond is receiving nutrients from the run off and that helps create plankton to start the food chain. Weeds can become a problem and are controlled several ways. There are chemicals for weed control but they get pretty pricey. A more natural way is to introduce sterilized Carp to the pond which eat vegetation. Pond Boss will be able to give you recommendations as to how many per acre and suppliers in your area.

Our pond has a pipe system to maintain level and also a spill way for when the pipe system can not keep up. In your case with just a spillway and the level varying so greatly in a single big rain you must be loosing a lot of fish at the spillway. Again I would talk to the people at Pond Boss and see if there is a system to save the fish without rebuilding the whole system.

MarkV

 

[N80]

Thanks for the reference guys and thanks for the pointers Mark.

The previous owner said there was a valve somewhere that controlled water level but that the valve was frozen with rust. There are two pipes coming out of the back of the dam. One big one that I think comes directly off the spillway tower and usually has some flow. After a big rain it is like a water cannon. The smaller pipe, maybe 8 or 10 inch always just has a trickle. I'm assuming it must be controlled by a valve somewhere but cannot find it anywhere. The spillway has a cement top with a hatch; removing the hatch I see nothing but a big shaft down to the big outlet pipe. No valve to be seen.

All the previous spillways I've had experience with just has a series of boards you could add or remove to adjust water level. Seemed to work well, but you sometimes had trouble getting a swollen one out and sometimes they rotted.

The grates on my spillway have also rusted out so big stuff can get into the spillway shaft.

I'll go over to pond boss and give them a try. Thanks again.

 

[MarkV]

George, I think your spillway and what I think of as a spillway are two different things. In my case the “emergency” spillway is nothing more than a 6’ wide ditch that is 4’ below the top of the dam to flow water when the piping system can not carry excess volume. It has only come into play twice during the last four years and that was during the storms related to Katrina.

MarkV

 

[N80]

What I call a spillway is basically a cement tower (think of a big chimney)with a pipe that goes from the bottom of it through the dam. Water flows over its edge. That edge determines the water level if there are no other ways to control it. Spillway may not be the right word for it.

We call the 'emergency spillway', which we also have, the 'run around'. The only time I have seen the run around wet was after Hugo in 1990.

 

[pat32rf]

Pond Boss Magazine Home Page! should be your first step in my thinking also. Just as friendly as TractorByNet but specialize in ponds like yours..They have certainly helped me.