05-18-2012, 12:12 AM
You said "OVERPOPULATED" ... (*oxygen levels)
Did the pond turn over? I had a local pond that I used to wear them out at a few years ago turn over. I couldn't catch anything there last spring at all. No bream, bass or crappie. I kept going there every few weeks and ran into another fisherman I know from our county. He was hiking* past that pond to Old man Johnson's crappie pond about 300 yards further into the farm fields here.
*we fish alot of watershed ponds that farmers made back in the 50's to 70's or ones they sold the dirt off their property to make some of highway 63 with. Some of those ponds are half a mile back in the fields with no road access and you have to hike.
Well I got to talking to him and he told me used to fish this pond too and that one morning the summer before he showed up and there were fish lining the banks dead and many more up in the shallow water still alive but gulping up out of the top of the water for air.
He said the pond had "rolled" and that it would be a couple of years before the ones that survived would even be big enough to catch and I should just leave that pond alone for about 5 years and let it recuperate.
I'm not saying that is what happened to your pond or ponds but it appears to have happened to two of ours that year when we had low rainfall and high heat and those ponds were OVERPOPULATED you could catch all kinds of fish there all the time and even see huge bluegill from the bank in schools. The fish population just got to much for the body of water to sustain and they just didn't have enough oxygen and many died off.
I can catch a few 1-2lb largemouth there now and a few 6" crappie but no more bream at all and no more catfish. I just don't even go there now and won't go there again until around 2015.
Just a thought I'm throwing out there because if I hadn't talked to that other fisherman I would have been stumped as to why the fish just "quit" biting in those ponds.[:/]
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Did the pond turn over? I had a local pond that I used to wear them out at a few years ago turn over. I couldn't catch anything there last spring at all. No bream, bass or crappie. I kept going there every few weeks and ran into another fisherman I know from our county. He was hiking* past that pond to Old man Johnson's crappie pond about 300 yards further into the farm fields here.
*we fish alot of watershed ponds that farmers made back in the 50's to 70's or ones they sold the dirt off their property to make some of highway 63 with. Some of those ponds are half a mile back in the fields with no road access and you have to hike.
Well I got to talking to him and he told me used to fish this pond too and that one morning the summer before he showed up and there were fish lining the banks dead and many more up in the shallow water still alive but gulping up out of the top of the water for air.
He said the pond had "rolled" and that it would be a couple of years before the ones that survived would even be big enough to catch and I should just leave that pond alone for about 5 years and let it recuperate.
I'm not saying that is what happened to your pond or ponds but it appears to have happened to two of ours that year when we had low rainfall and high heat and those ponds were OVERPOPULATED you could catch all kinds of fish there all the time and even see huge bluegill from the bank in schools. The fish population just got to much for the body of water to sustain and they just didn't have enough oxygen and many died off.
I can catch a few 1-2lb largemouth there now and a few 6" crappie but no more bream at all and no more catfish. I just don't even go there now and won't go there again until around 2015.
Just a thought I'm throwing out there because if I hadn't talked to that other fisherman I would have been stumped as to why the fish just "quit" biting in those ponds.[:/]
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