Want ducks in my pond

[oosik]

Ha, ha, ha - - do you guys really need to see another pic of my lake and the cattails? Local geologists/hydrologists have determined that my lake is somewhere between 18,000 to 20,000 years old. How much longer do you expect I will have to wait for the cattails to "spread out and take over" everything.

And NO, they are NOT listed as a noxious plant and YES, they DO provide beneficial habitat. Sorry guys.

View attachment 583361 BTW - the breakdown on my lake is: Ea end, near the house - 0.4 Acres of cattails
Open water - 5.0 Acres
W end, at outlet = 3.0 Acres of cattails

 

[ovrszd]

No, I wasn't asking for another pic. I was simply stating differences in areas and bodies of water.

 

[bcp]

Got cattails? Eat them!

Some recipes at the end of this article.

Cattails: The Survival Food That’s Great Anytime - Off The Grid News

Bruce

 

[oosik]

In this area, cattails WILL NOT grow in water deeper than four(4) feet. Do you guys have a variety that will grow at greater depths? There is a NOXIOUS WEED that can choke out a shallow lake in this area. Milfoil( numerous varieties & species ) - and once in a lake, it can not be eliminated, just managed. State Game Depts & State Wildlife Depts have gone to great lengths, in our area, to eliminate its spread.

bcp - I've tried one recipe - I'm not even an average cook - still tasted like hot wall paper paste to me. However, I do have 3.5 Acres of them, if somebody wanted to try. They are EXTREMELY high in fibre, if somebody needed to correct a digestive imbalance. And with that much cattails - I'll be able to survive forever.

 

[EddieWalker]

I'm a little surprised by your passion in supporting cattails. I wonder if it's just something that you like and that you have had good luck with, but nobody else has?

Where I used to duck hunt in the Central CA Valley, it wasn't uncommon to have cattails out in water deeper then we could walk. Fish and Game said that they would drain the ponds in summer to remove the cattails that where chocking out the canals, which where six feet deep and deeper. Over on the Pond Boss forum, guys there claim that cattails will easily grow in six feet of water, or more, if the soil, water clarity and temperatures are good.

When I finished digging my pond, I looked into Dwarf Cattails as an option because I like the look of them and wanted them on my pond. I intentionally dug and shaped my shoreline to drop off as quickly as I could to get it too deep for cattails to spread, but was finally talked out of it by the guys on Pond Boss. Even Dwarf Cattails will spread to where they want to go, and as deep as they want to grow depending on conditions. I've seen them chock out too many ponds to take the risk, so I decided against them.

Mother Nature will do what she wants, and I have several types of aquatic reeds that have choked out my shoreline. They only go a few feet deep, and they provide perfect protection for fingerlings, but I don't really care for how they look. One of the biggest surprises to my big pond, after clearing 7 acres of thick timber to build it, and ending up with 4.56 acres of surface water, is that in two different locations, I have two types of blue bearded iris's growing there, and two species of fish that I did not put in there. Stuff just magically appears once the pond fills up and birds start to visit it!!!

 

[buckeyefarmer]

I have never seen cattails grow in deep water. Not sure how deep water is in our pond where they stop growing, but probably less than 6 ft.

 

[check]

Thanks, oosik - this pond is self-contained on a 25-acre property which also fronts on a big lake in Ontario (Kawagama lake - look it up), which is itself great for Smallmouth Bass, so I have all I need. I wanted the trout for the small pond, to help attract renters, since we rent out the property on a weekly basis in the summer. (Kawagama Lake ($3495 CDN/wk): 4 Ft. of l... - VRBO) And it did work - several people caught trout, the last survivors which are now over 2 feet long!

Maybe I will try a raft system, although Mergansers (and Loons) are great swimmers, and can probably chase the fish underneath the floating docks.

 

[MickeyDBC]

If you want decorative ducks (not to hunt) the best thing to keep them is food. We used to hunt on public lands and found a few spots that always had lots of ducks. Turned out that someone else was baiting them with deer corn. Hit legal shooting time and we had to shoot the ducks in self defense because there were so many coming in. When it got light enough to see into the water it looked like the bottom of the cove was was paved in gold. We got out of there pronto because we did not want to get busted hunting over bait but it was a great fifteen minutes before we found up what was up. Food will bring ducks and keep them there.

 

[MossRoad]

I've never seen cattails deeper than about 3-4' deep either. They do choke out the shoreline in most lakes around here, making it difficult to get to the open/deeper water, though. Prolific if you don't keep them under control.

 

[MossRoad]

Ha, ha, ha - - do you guys really need to see another pic of my lake and the cattails? Local geologists/hydrologists have determined that my lake is somewhere between 18,000 to 20,000 years old. How much longer do you expect I will have to wait for the cattails to "spread out and take over" everything.

And NO, they are NOT listed as a noxious plant and YES, they DO provide beneficial habitat. Sorry guys.

View attachment 583361 BTW - the breakdown on my lake is: Ea end, near the house - 0.4 Acres of cattails
Open water - 5.0 Acres
W end, at outlet = 3.0 Acres of cattails

Your shoreline is rock. There's no rock like that in most midwestern/prairie lakes and ponds. That's probably why you don't mind cattails and why they aren't taking over your lake. If the shore was soil based, you'r lake would be choked from shore to about 3-4' water depth. And as they die out and decay, they deposit a layer on the bottom and gradually fill in the lake from the shore towards the center. All lakes around this part of the country will eventually succumb to vegetative takeover. It's a natural process here.