OT, Sorta, Catching My Fish

I thought about dynamite but maybe there is a better way. Grin

We had this horrible drought back in '07 and between that, the blue-green algae we had up here (Lake Texoma stuff) and coon tail moss, I had over 100 (counted that many and quit) of my best bass and catfish die off.

I have since found the proper pond management chemicals and we have had some rain. Second the perch didn't die off and I have hundreds of them and third, last spring I planted 200 8-9" fingerling catfish.

Since all (apparently all) the large predators are gone, the perch and cats are prolyfic.

Problem: In trying to coax the cats to bite, the perch and turtles beat them to the bait and it is useless.

However: I fed them all last summer and they surface feed on floating food. I have a pier adjacent to where I feed them.

I have a 6' cast (throw) net but it's too small. I'm thinking about blowing a hundred bucks on an 8 or 9' with lots of weights and this summer when they come up to feed "lasso" them.

What do you think?

Serious replies if that's possible, please. Grin

Mark

i too lost a lot of fish during 07 drought in alabama, mostly catfish. actually i am glad they are gone, just bass and bream now. what do you use for chemical management?

BD (before drought) we had the same situation here in Aggieland. Found out that so long as you feed them, they will not bite. Just wait for the easy food. If you want to catch them, quit feeding them and get them hungry. If you still want to feed them then make a dip net device, sink it in the water, throw out the feed and when they swim in to eat lift up the net around them. If they try to dive down, they are already in the net. be sure to counter balance the net or you may never pick it up when it is full of fish. Hope this helps.

I like the basket idea. May just do that as I can rig up a way to get it in. I have some old seine material and pipe and can make one.

In the summer when level is reasonable, I have about 5' of water at the end of the pier.

Thanks,
Mark

What kind of chemical do you use. I have the same problem including cat tails. I need to clean mine out. I don't think that i lost all my cats, just the biggest ones.

Surely there are others out there but I found a company by the name of Aquacide on the www and they have been in the business for over 57 years. Figured they knew what they were doing.

First off I had a real good (ha) crop of coontail. I liked it as the fry could hide in it and grow up. Worked fine.

Just so happens that in that year the algae was in full bloom partially due to my fertilizing the banks for pasture grazing and obviously some of it got in the water. In short there was a lot of it.

As the summer progressed, the water level shrank exposing the coon tail. The algae just settled on top and as the sun worked on it daily, the algae dried out and became a thick mat. The whole 2 acre pool was covered almost 100%.

Especially in the shallow end, where the temp and dying vegitation removed the oxygen, and no wind/wave action could replenish it, the fish would go up there to forage and run out of O2 before they could get back to the deeper water.

So I had 2 problems: The moss supporting the algae, and the algae. Their product Aquathol Super K Granular was job specific for the moss. They have a cross reference table in their product brochure that explains that. It also does other things they don't mention and that is kill off cattails and gets the algae too. The latter two were very pleasant suprises.

They tell you how to use it and when they say wait for it to work, have some patience. You will be greatly rewarded. However, in a matter of days I could start to see clear spots in the pool and after about a month the pool was essentially clear.

You have to do it a portion at a time to retain your O2 levels which I wasn't worried about since my fish were (all I thought) dead.

The product killed the vegetation and it just sank to the bottom. As stated, you need to continue the treatment when you see moss returning. It's been several years and it still less than 5% of the surface area. The cattails died off in the winter and didn't come back the following spring. The Algae responds to CUSO4, Copper Sulphate which is readily available at big box stores if you want to get a seasonal head start on it. It too takes it's time but works.

The product I bought is 10 x stronger than their previous product. I had no idea as to what it would take for my 2 acre pool. I bought 2 of the 25# pails for about $1400. BIG mistake.

One 10# pail for $350 would have done the job. Several ways you could mitigate the cost, like share with neighbors, save what you didn't use for future applications for a couple. It comes in a sealed plastic pale and will keep nicely.

Good Luck,
Mark

Check my response below.

Don't know how big your pond is; in the late '60s, we needed to 'start over' in a farm pond; used Rotenone, which worked great.

You could always do what my friend down in Rodgers did. He had his man build a 10x10 with sides out of 14ga expanded metsl. Then built a boom and winch out over the walkway. When he would feed the fish he raised up the device and got the ones he wanted to eat. He says their my fish and ill catch them the way i like.

I know it's used for fish population control by removing the oxygen from the water. I sorta had that job already done.

One use was by neighborhood kids that you ran off your property for illegally fishing to get back at you. Had a neighbor have that happen and he said that you wouldn't believe the mess that made.

Buttttt ala we finally find a use for the noxious Federally protected buzzards in liew of killing calves and maiming their mothers.

Mark

For anyone interested, when I addressed the problem the first thing I did was to get on the www and look at the TX. Pks. and Wldlfe. site (Gamewarden) hoping to get a heads up for a product of which they approved. The mentioned product was listed on their site as a solution even though they did not go as far as to endorse it, but they didn't have to.

Well, that told me that the federales wouldn't be looking me up and I wouldn't be harming anything else.

Other thing is in the directions for use it discusses animals using the treated water and it meets my requirements having the pool in the middle of one of my pastures used for grazing.

HTH,
Mark

(quoted from post at 14:38:25 02/01/13) Check my response below.

Click to expand...

Texmark correctly cautioned about depleting O2 if too much is killed at one time. Heed that advice,it's easy to kill every thing but turtles while killing plants.
Back to the subject of catching the cats. We have had cats in 6 stock ponds for over 30 years and never had a problem catching a few any time we wanted. My observation has been that when food is broadcast it causes the cats to bite better than when no food has been put in the water. The most unusual example was that when I smoked,I noticed that if I fliped a butt amoung the feeding fish one would emediatly take it under. Within a few secounds the butt would resurface and not once did a secound fish touch it.
Another example of channel cats glutionus behavior was my Okie friend baiting a hole at the river or public lake with hog pellets. A few hours after he had baited we returned to fish. The cats would bite fast and hard eventhough thier bellies would be full of hog pellets. It would be interesting to know reason(s) of these discripicens of feeding behavior as experienced by different people.

TMark, why don't you try to pot them. A common commercial crab pot will catch a fair sized catfish. A fyke would work as well. Search for images of "fish traps" and "fykes".
Best Regards,
Charlie

After much deliberation and helpful hints, I decided on a 6' cast net. I can feed from the end of the pier and after the catfish join the perch, usually out in deeper water, I can lasso them, having plenty of clearance to get the net out there. I figure 10 out of 200 is enough to clean at a time and I figure I can get that many.

If we get a drought again this summer, I surely don't want to loose these babies. Last time I looked, back before the first cold snap, they were running 1 to 1 1/2 pounds guestimating, so by spring they will be perfect filleting size. And just think, the only contamination is a little cow dung.

I got a net with a lot of weight so that it will sink fast, hopefully beating the fish to the bottom. Reviews from other buyers gave it a 5 x 5 and says it sinks fast.

We'll see and thanks for the comments.

Mark