i have a good amount of knoledge about beavers impossible to tear down they will always rebuild fast! also you cant fool them with a culvert they will just dam that also trust me shoot them at dawn or dusk and what pop doesnt know wont hurt him eventually more will move in you can deal with them then. good luck
BigTripp, Hopefully you scared the poachers off. Your bass look kind of skinny.Your idea of putting more structure in (shallow water) will give the fry a place to grow up. I think some of those nice sized crappies took advantage of the shortage of hiding spots for the smaller fish.
Did the guy ever come out and scuba dive the pond? And if he did, what did he tell you?
Saw something once about beaver control, they took about 100 feet of plastic corrugated drain put one end anchored under a float in the middle of the pond, and ran the other end through the beaver dam. The beaver dam is then in the middle of the tile. Don't know how effective it is but it looked interesting and plausible.
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We tried the corrugated drain pipe the last time we tore it out about two months ago. It wasn't draining enough water to make a difference and the next time I came down there was black pipe mixed in with the sticks and bushes.
Our scuba diving friend moved to Texas before he got a chance to come out. We started marking some structure. Threw some of the trees from the big storm in and we have a bunch of tires that I'm making some cover out of to put in. Also might take the backhoe down and dig some trenches in the shallower sections just to make some little shelves and break up the flat bottom.
I tried some Senkos for the first time today and the big bass were tearing them up. Got five about three pounds in about two hours this morning before it got real hot.
Well, the beaver may have been a blessing in disguise. Went down this past weekend for the first time since my last post in late June. Despite the lack of rain this year the beaver dam kept the pond at about normal summer pool and the water was crystal clear. Caught 26 bass including these three piggies. The big ones seemed to have a little more weight on them than the ones caught even a year ago. A ton of small minnows around the shore and a lot of small bluegill eating grass clippings after I brush hogged.
18.5
21
22
Since we had the surprise channel last time I ran to Walmart and got some livers. Went down for a couple of hours. Got one 18 inch channel and the fattest bullhead I've ever seen in my life. The bullheads are going to join the crappie in going either in the cooler or the weeds. We were thinking about stocking some channels but with the nice size of the bass and a couple of good size cats we're going to hold off until we get a little bigger sample to figure out exactly what we have in there.
Good looking fish BigTripp. Wise decision to hold off on stocking until the pond could be assessed. The bass look healthy. The clear water probably has a lot to do with the weeds filtering it and lack of flow.
Um not a hybrid catfish, they are test tube babies and for the most part rare. They are fun to talk about and many people claim to catch or have them but......no.
That is a hog of a black bullhead and lots of other good looking fish too.
__________________ Single White Male -looking for wild healthy mature Flathead. No smaller than 15 pounds but the bigger the better. Do not need to cook or clean, just needs enjoy munching on creek chubs and long fights on the beach. Please meet me tonight at the old scioto mill dam in Piketon. Ill be waiting
I agree that it's not a hybrid but they aren't rare in the pond world. Around 1/4 of the catfish fry produced for aquaculture operations are Blue/channel hybrids and this number is growing yearly due to their faster, more consistant growth to market size and better fillet yield.
Naturally produced hybrids are extremely rare, nearly impossible, but with the increase in privately/commercially stocked hybrid catfish, increases in catches from public waters are to be expected. That said, it is very difficult to visually identify a hybrid catfish with certainty as they look very similar to both parents or one varying across the spectrum just as members from each species often exhibit a wide range characteristics.
As far as the fish business I don’t have as much experience with catfish. From the limited info I could find, it looks like more than half of that- 12%. This is still more than I expected. That number could be wrong just because it is only looking at MISS and ALB and those are farmers fry producing est. I found no info on sales. True percentages could be higher or lower?
Where is the closest place to buy these hybrid cats because I don’t know of any in our range. I don't know anyone who has them or sells them. I have never seen or caught one or talked to anyone who has. So I would still call them "for the most part rare".
I know some farms are being accused of and few have been caught selling channels as hybrid catfish. And why wouldn’t they, there is not a person here who could tell the difference. I don’t think you should be able to sell fish that don’t cross in nature. What if the F1s are more likely to cross with the parent or each other. Human influence tends to not work out too well with nature. And if they say they won’t cross, that is just a guess.
Sorry to hi-jack the thread
Those really are some nice looking fish. Looks like you have a nice getaway there and good luck with the beavers.
__________________ Single White Male -looking for wild healthy mature Flathead. No smaller than 15 pounds but the bigger the better. Do not need to cook or clean, just needs enjoy munching on creek chubs and long fights on the beach. Please meet me tonight at the old scioto mill dam in Piketon. Ill be waiting
Rustyfish, I was going from memory when I wrote "about 1/4" so your 12% is probably more accurate as in 2011 it was 15% based on the article, the percentage is expected to climb to 31% by 2014. 2012 numbers are maybe 20% based on the below if production increases are as expected and consumption remains constant.
"In 2011, six catfish hatcheries in Mississippi and Arkansas produced an estimated 111 million hybrid fry. If these estimates were correct, hybrid fry constituted 15 per cent of the 732 million channel catfish fry produced in 2011. Hybrid fry production is projected to exceed 200 million by 2014." http://www.gaalliance.org/mag/2012/Mar-Apr/download.pdf
Closest place to Waverly is probably: About 3 HR drive.
Aquila International Inc
437 Duell Dr
Versailles, KY 40383-1412
(859) 873-7016
Inquiry into OSU Extension would be worth a try as OSU is currently researching them.
I can't say what kind of damage escape would cause. I would say worse case impact would be similar to saugeye on wild walleye or sauger and more likely the effect would probably be similar impact as Hybrid striped bass on white bass....just guessing though. This guess is based on the fact that these hybrids are similarly functionally sterile. I would suspect that the answers would be different depending on who you ask. http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/c...fishReport.pdf
Last edited by PondFin@ic; 09-07-2012 at 03:07 PM.
OSU is not researching them, at least on any scale larger than lab room fish tanks and I'm not aware of that either.
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__________________ Single White Male -looking for wild healthy mature Flathead. No smaller than 15 pounds but the bigger the better. Do not need to cook or clean, just needs enjoy munching on creek chubs and long fights on the beach. Please meet me tonight at the old scioto mill dam in Piketon. Ill be waiting
Went down for the first time this year. The beaver dam is at the highest point ever and the water was very murky. There was just a ton of dead weeds and crap everywhere, I'm guessing from the lack of flow. No sign of the beaver anywhere which is unusual since we were down there all day. I'm hoping they finally moved on. There was a nice six point buck down on the other side of the pond about 15 feet from the water with the rack still intact. It had a busted rib and looked like if may have been shot and someone couldn't track it. Coyotes have got to it since then. Didn't manage many fish but the ones we did get were monsters.
BigTripp, nice fish... I just picked out one of your videos ( Labor Day Fishing) and loved it . Great choice of songs and your honey to go along with the video. I'm going to check out the rest of your videos later.
Also, you have a great sounding band...(I watched two).
Thank you sir. I'm planning to put up a lot more fishing videos this summer, started getting into that late last fall. If you're interested I also have a new band I just joined a couple of weeks ago now
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