I don't know why we wear crazy outfits. I think it has something to do with the fact that almost nobody can see us. Anyway, my game plan is to catch up on the blog posts I shot photos for over these past 10 months and then catch up to the upstairs bedroom and bath renovations. Today's photos are from last October, meaning October 2014.
We are fortunate enough to have three lovely ponds on our property and I've had to learn a little bit about their maintenance. (There's a whole lot more for me to learn though.) When you keep a pond stocked for fishing, you deal with two functionally distinct groups of fish, one group that is active during warm temperatures and the other group active during cold. For example, the fish in the warm temperature group will be active late spring through early fall and lie dormant, or enter a cessation of feeding, in the other half of the year.
Here's the catch (pun very much intended): if you want to catch fish on a line and bait, they need to be actively feeding. If you try to fish during the dormant season, you won't have much luck because they won't be eating. Honestly, things like this had never occurred to me before we moved here. I guess I assumed fish and bait were like me and cheesecake, always up for a bite. It's really hard being this simple, I'm not going to lie. Thank goodness I live in the country to smarten me up a little.
Ponds in southern Illinois should not be stocked with cold-temperature fish. This group of fish are typically found in cold, fast-flowing waters. The lack of circulation and high temperatures during the summer will mean these fish will die before they make it to their next active season. These fish are available (specifically rainbow trout, walleye, and yellow perch) and can be put in ponds as soon as the temperatures are cool enough in the early fall. They would need to be fished out before they die at the beginning of the following summer so this would be best for the cold weather enthusiast.
Wanting to make sure our ponds stayed fishable for the long-term, we decided to go ahead and restock it with the main warm temperature fish that do well in local ponds: large-mouth bass, blue gill, red ear sunfish (to eat the snail larvae that can infect the other fish), channel catfish, and grass carp (not for fishing; they eat the algae). Because these fish are dormant during the cold temperatures, you need to add them either before their dormancy begins or just as it ends.
In this area, they recommend that you add fish in the fall up until October or wait until March. Since no feeding or growth happens during dormancy, there is no advantage in picking one month over the other. In March, (or as the lady at the fishery explained, at the beginning of soccer season) all the fish begin feeding and growing. By the end of May the pond should be fishable. In October 2014 we added fish to our ponds and these are the photos I'm sharing today.
Just like adding fish that you bring home from the fish store, your fish need to acclimate to the temperature of their new home. We did this by tying the bags of fish to shore and letting them float in the pond water for about 30 minutes. Once the water temperature inside the bag matched the temperature outside, we let the baby fish out.
We had just hosted a Halloween carnival/trunk-or-treat for our church on our property so we had all these pumpkins laying around. While waiting to release the fish we tossed some pumpkins around. Why not?
Then it was back to the fish.
Demeter wanted to make sure all suspicious activity was monitored and accounted for.
I know you can't see the fish in the photos really so you might think I'm making all of this up. I promise that they're there; this isn't like the emperor showing off his new clothes, honest.
We got all of our fish at Logan Hollow Fish Farm and I can highly recommend them for their attention to helping their customers be informed and buy what they need. They were all very lovely people and it was a fun family excursion going to pick out our fish. Here are some photos I took with my phone.
All of the vats held different species of fish and at different ages or size.
We decided to be frugal and buy the youngest, smallest and cheapest sizes of fish.
Everyone was super nice to my children and let them be very "hands on" with the fish there. It wasn't exactly a tourist attraction aquarium but still very interesting.
So now you know everything I know and are ready to stock your own ponds. Fishing as a family is really such a fun activity, especially catch and release. It's also been highly entertaining to learn a little field biology here and there.
