Facebook Live 3 7 18 Interesting facts about bass, diversity of habitat and Debbie's perspective ab

greetings everybody bobble us the pond boss coming at you from the world headquarters of pond boss magazine in Gordonville Texas hanging out with a very special guest tonight my wife Debbie glad you're here honey can't wait yeah we're gonna have a little bit of fun in that we're gonna talk about all kinds of fun stuff you know right now the spawn is going on I'm going to talk about that I'm gonna talk about the different habitat types that you have in your pond and and if he's gonna come in here tonight with some of her thoughts so if oh you guys there's Jason nips dad hey Jason greetings glad you're on board buddy and uh if your wife is around she's gonna want to hear what Debbie has to say because she Debbie sees things that guys don't see she sees things that to make a pond more beautiful to make it more functional to make it to dress it up a little bit I mean we've done some pretty cool stuff out there I can handle the fish you know one of my favorite stories is when we when we moved into our home out there we we built a pond and I was talking to Debbie as we were building it my cocteau was doing the dozer work and as we were rocking and rolling with it there was a bunch of post oak trees it was in an old walk trot beside our house Steve and Hayley good evening sir but as we were looking there was a bunch of trees bunch of post oak trees that needed to come out so I said hey honey come here I want to show you this let's go look at this and I said I want to put these trees over here by this Shore but when I have some fish habitat right there it's gonna be really fun and she said no this is gonna be a swimming pond and I said no no no baby you don't I'm a fish guy she said maybe you don't understand what I just sit sit whoo so now next to the house we have a swimming pond now how those fish got in there beats me we just kept telling Ashley there weren't any and we do swim in it Tyler Stubbs is on board hey Tyler good to see you buddy so uh I'm gonna take a minute see if I can get it on my laptop cuz it's easier to see your questions on my laptop as we're video in here so bear with me one minute as I find it because sometimes I'm gonna crunch the page and see if to come up I know it's there let's see here I don't like dead here and you don't either so while I'm waiting for it to come up on my laptop cuz there's always a little tear it is right there babe all right then we'll blow it up and we can see it now I can read all the questions amber young hello amber good gosh hadn't seen you in a long time Jacob west all the way from yeah Bob you are lucky man and lucky am I look at this look at this Jacob West dictabird hello all Steven Nina and guess you know dave something absolutely I know Dave ceptin man you see this you see this palm boss back here Dave had that commissioned by a local chainsaw artist right there and Brownstown Illinois so you bet there's Gary Stevens checking in from San Antonio area there's Richard let's see Anthony about a let's see who else is on right quick holy cow this is gonna be pretty fast and furious we've got 20 people on board now sometimes I can't see everybody that's on here so uh if I don't acknowledge you forgive me because I'm just not seeing who I was on here bear Brun Durrett is on hey bear go get your bride she's gonna want to hear what Debbie has to say Renee he's got to be around there somewhere grab her in the meantime I'm gonna do my little commercial like I do every week bonbons magazine thirty-five dollars a year six issues chock-full of great information I mean this this issue is just loaded actually the march/april is at the printer it's ready to be mailed it hasn't gone out yet but it will be momentarily also just to know pawn boss has got a lot of resources for you if you want to learn anything about how to build upon to how to manage upon any of that stuff we have that you've got the bond boss calm website for them the website itself has got all kinds of free articles some videos and things we archive the videos on Facebook on her Facebook page and we also are counting them on YouTube so they're accessible Jerry Oller Daniel Powell Daniel from North Carolina Jerry's from San Antonio Bryan Lawrence Timothy Phillips Todd Austin Travis and g'day holy cow were you from Travis good to see you buddy or trav Pam Thunderbird hey Roy were the howdy Roy glad you guys are on board we also have a number of books if you guys need a book just add water this is this is a pretty cool book Mike took my cocktail when I first met him I don't even know that he could spell his name there's only two letters in it but I'm tell you something he has got some fantastic stories to tell and he's compiled those in this book which is pretty much his life's work of building lakes and ponds we've also got another one called perfect pond want one that's a great book as well Troy Todd good to see you now Oh Troy's that Troy's ahead of the game you learn how to do this if you will please in the comments section put hashtag pond boss magazine click like and share the video it's perfect if you'll look on the screen there should be the word invited so if you'll click invite that way that'll invite your friends we would also want you to share it because the audience is beginning to build and I want to do a big shout out to my friend Jimmy Houston he shared the promo this week and we've had over 12,000 people take a look at it so we're glad that you guys are here we got a lot of things to talk about the question is already coming Timothy Phillips lots of algae in my pond in the summer can too many grass carp be bad how many should I have for a one acre pond well you know what I'm gonna go ahead knock that one out since it's fresh up grass carp won't eat algae now what you got to do is you got to figure out figure out what they will leave now they'll leave vascular plants they'll leave bushy pond weed coontail things like that but they won't need algae so in the pond management business the pond management of what you do you need to figure out what's the best tool and then use that the algae typically away in the summertime now when it comes to plants you need to identify the plant that's job one you got to really know what you're doing with that if you know what the plan is then you can come up with the best solution for it how many grass carp you know one acre pond depends on how bad the vegetation problem is I don't I tell you what I do I start off with three or four no more than that and then if that's not enough then you can add another three or four the thing is is you don't want to put in more than you need so in the way you tell that is what kind of job they're doing I want to take a couple of minutes right now I was watching keep Austin fishings Facebook page this week and there are some giant bass being caught right now one fish in particular down in the Texas Hill Country that I saw was about an 8 pound female and her fins were red the anal fin was red and the tail fin was red and she was already spent so the spawn is on right now and one of the questions I did a live interview with those guys yesterday I think was on their weekly weigh-in show the question was asked of me is it bad to catch bass off of a bed well in public leg no I don't think it bothers anything at all you know if you think about it one female bass that weighs 8 or 9 pounds may lay 100,000 eggs so how many bass really need to have eggs that can hatch to replenish the population so I think it's more of an ethical question than it is a biological question now when we start talking about there's LeAnn landscape forces onboard dictabird Scott Lindsay's on dick says is there a non-invasive pond plant that won't take over your pond up north here uh yeah there are there are there's a number of pond weeks you know I think curly pond weed is a pretty good one some native milk boils now what you want to do is you want to avoid the exotic plants you don't want like um some of the sago pod we some of the curly leaf may be in shallow water Eurasian water milfoil that's a tough one that stuff will take over a pond so do a little research and understand what's native to your part of the planet the UM oh you don't want anything I was gonna tell you for those of you that subscribe to the magazine within the next 24 hour and haven't done it we're gonna pitch in a big poster that's a sunfish poster it's very cool it's a think we selling for seven dollars so for a subscription we'll throw a poster your way so be sure and subscribe to pond boss magazine now how do you do that you can send us an email at info at pond boys calm you can go on pond boss calm and click on subscribe now that's probably the easiest way to do it and so shoot that's uh we'd love to have you on board Mike rivers is on board over there from Tennessee I believe Victor Moberg good to see you the UM you know what one of the key topics I want to talk about tonight is the diversity of habitat since this is the spawning season we want to be sure we've got lots and lots of gravel beds in places that your bluegill can spawn places that your bass can spawn now once those little bitty eggs are hatched they turn into fry very small not much bigger than that their mouth might be as big around as the head of a pin so not only do they need food when they first come off the nest they need a place they can hide not get eaten so some good dense habitat around the shoreline that's a wise thing and then there's the fish get a little bit bigger you want something less dense big fish like big bass they prefer shallow water quick access to deep water beside a tree trunk or something like that so we'll talk more about habitat as we go on let's see there's Josh flowers with Twin Oaks pond management Josh glad you're on board buddy so now you know what let's kind of shift gears and I've invited Debbie to talk about some of the things she sees when we I know built that pond beside the house back in 2003 I think it was you know just looking at her she knew and for those of you that don't know our home burned down in 2005 that's the bad news the good news is she got to build her dream home and she has done some spectacular things into her eyes I mean she sees she sees colors she sees the way things are decorated the way things work together in a home and she's carried that out into the pond environment so I monopolized this conversation for 11 minutes so let's bring Debbie into this mix honey thank you I can do that so when you just take our pond for example we've had a couple of weddings well one thing that I remember from the very beginning was this that if Bob said were gone well he agreed on the swimming pond but whether you're gonna swim in the pond or just have recreation around the pond you need to think about it and I remember when he was having Mike build it he said you want to think about your shoreline where you're gonna go out four feet down out six feet down out nine feet down and then by 12 feet that was right at the very edge of the dock and you're always gonna have kids or big kids dive off the dock and then he made the very middle of the pond 23 feet so I do remember that in the very beginning for safety and whether you're gonna swim in it or whether you're just gonna have people fishing around it I thought that was a very good point but one thing that I love about the pond is a pond is there's so many things that we look at when we go out there and I want to decorate it so you know I have hanging metal planners that I attacked to the dock well come springtime I will line those and put beautiful sweet potato front vines and what they do is those roots will grow down and the little fish that are around our big fish that are around the dock they like to come underneath the root system that's growing underneath that on them and then that's the my life biological you know part of me coming out but the main reason I do it is because I love to see the green that flows out of it all the way around the pond what's brought it looks pretty cool about that there's Stephen Barton with Texas Pro Lake management Ethan Lovelace fisheries biologist from the state of Oklahoma look at there there's lisa krone and holy cow Lisa good to see you the the cool thing about what Debbie is talking about is you can buy these almost like porch hangers for flower pots they're made out of iron and metal and so we just screwed them to the side of the dock the water comes up in them she lines it with coconut you know like you'd see in a hanging basket and then we go to the nursery and we buy sweet potato vines and we leave the sweet potato vine roots in the dirt and just sit them down in there and shoot within six or eight weeks they're wandering out in the pond and you see them floating up on top of the water it's pretty darn cool and adds adds color and that's something that other people don't have you know it's pretty good young Lynda Jennings is on board Lynda good to see you glad to see the ladies coming on honey what does so besides the plants on the Darkin well one thing that I've thoroughly enjoyed has been our floating islands and we have used the floating islands for several things again I love to decorate with them you know we had one of our sons got married five years ago and they got married right there on the dock and I took the floating islands that have irises sweet potato vines we even have a little been of a some trees will increase well a tree just sprouted and so I took the floating islands tied him up on the dock and then decorated him with the twinkle lights so they were right there on the dock again for decorations and instead of a nice mood for an evening wedding something that I like as well which reminds me is lighting the perimeter of your pond on one area we have a flagstone walkway that walks around the area of the pond to get to the zipline that I've created for the kids and adults took up we've had a lot of adults it's not just for kids to climb up and it goes to the middle of the pond and they can drop off but as they walk around the flagstone patio I have a rope lighting that will like that area not only does it you know give a nice border to the flagstone but it lights up at night and it again aesthetics is just you know it's just beautiful to watch and the ziplining ziplining a huge hit with kids now who was the first one to go up the zipline [Laughter] hey there's Kelly Duffy hey Kelly glad you're on board you know the one of the things I love about what Debbie does is not only does she have a great eye for color she's also got a great eye for lighting on the far side of her pond we've left it pretty well natural actually all natural but what we didn't do is we added some landscape lighting in the trees to where they shine up on the trees and they shine down on the trees let's see Jacob west here's a question honey would you recommend a floating island over a permanent island built into a new pond bill I'm gonna tell you this Jacob I think there's there are two separate things you know with what you want in your Lake cuz I know about your lake you'd like to have a permanent Island because that adds a lot more diversity for your fish habitat which keeps us on that on that subject for tonight so when you've got an island out in the middle I think an island is a good idea I think and now it is a good idea if you need to dispose of some dirt so when you do that build the island now one thing Debbie referred to earlier is right along the edge of our pond it's right by the edge we have a retaining wall by the house then it goes down to four feet deep and then it moves out about one bulldozer blade wide as octo would say then there's a three to one slope that goes down and then it goes to another flat that's about six feet deep then it goes out to the dock and drops off 12 feet deep so people can jump off the dock so having those those ridges or those stair steps going down that's the safe thing to have Plus do that on your I'll inject it because that creates habitat then you can decorate it with with cedar trees or you know some of the things you've got you guys have some rocks out there you know some rock piles on those shelves are good Kelly Duffy where he said how do you get to see buddy my sister LeAnn must focus on Tammy lively Furman hey Tammy good to see she'd love to see a picture of our pond and say what I'll do I'll shoot some pictures out alright I've got some pictures I'll post them on this Facebook feed now I probably won't do it tonight but I'll do it tomorrow and we'll do that you know when it comes to the lighting there's a number of things that you've done we've got a bow Joe fish light but you haven't seen those before those are they got a little Harley gig weedeater looking gadget underneath the florescent bulb what are those never dyed bulbs it looks like a mixing bowl of silver stainless steel mixing bowl and so it comes on it does when it kicks on and starts spinning around around and it knocks bugs in the water so you can go out there in the evenings especially in the summer and the spring in the fall and you can see all kinds of little sunfish coming up they're Turtles coming up there it's pretty cool these just sit up on the porch you know talk about your porch that's pretty cool well one thing that the porch is quite a bit up above the pond so you know we can come out there and we have stairs that go down to the dock and then we have another stairs that goes down on the other side of the pond area but right in the middle and I think this has been something that I've enjoyed as well is that we did a waterfall so we could take the we did some rocks around and I planted some plants and you know we always put you know I try to put some real pretty ground cover but what bob has done is taken the put a pump in the waterfall and it takes and just circulates it out of the pond back up through and we have something that's running and I love the sound of just moving water and of course the grandkids love to sit there and put their feet in it and again it's just another one of those things that we enjoy sitting there and listening to and you know I like to plant the plants around it and see the different things that will come up and get in on it and the other thing that I really do like about having the pond and having you know people come over is that you know we can sit out there and one thing that I don't know if Bob's talked about but we started getting the dragonflies so you don't watch my videos I haven't talked about dragonglass well and and I love them and I think that it's something that we're you know people go well because of the mosquitoes and all of this stuff that you know he's talked to me about having different things so I plant different plants down even with pots all the way down to the pond on the rocks for certain things like mosquitoes and things that will will draw the dragonflies the different flowers and things like that so basically what we did was we created habitats for dragonfly larvae since they grow up in the water and the reason we did that is guess what they eat they eat mosquitoes so we've got some pretty cool dragonflies that just that hatch all summer long now we don't have millions of them because we have fish that eat the larvae as well but we've got probably five or six different varieties of dragonflies that are pretty cool let's see Scott Lee there's Greg Graham say Greg her you guys had quite the adventure I bet you're about ready to be home which I bet you are by now Scott Lindsay did you build your doctor before you filled the pond any way to build a doctor yourself after the pond is filled I didn't think it had enough to build the dock before the pond filled uh yes yeah we did build ours before the pond filled but but there's some really good products out there as a matter of fact there's a story in I think the November December issue of pond boss about docked if you'll send me an email and remind me about our conversation I'll send you a copy of that story and you can see there's floating docks there's permanent docks that you can put up with water in the pond so you can't yes you can tackle that as a as a reminder to everybody please hashtag pond boss magazine in the comments click like and share the video now if you do that you'll be eligible for a drawing for a fine boss cup mug and a pond boss hat now say what this week will pitch in one of those posters I showed you all ago so do that does help us grow the audience a little bit and then the last week's winner was Eric farm Eric you're not a subscriber so I don't have your address so I'm going to announce to you here if you would send me your address or send it to info at pond boss calm so we can mail your hat and your cup to you Jim fridge finally found the aqua max sport fish MVP great stuff thanks for the tip in the magazine love this episode hey what's not to love about this episode oh thank you for those words let's see here Anthony abates checking it in again Don a winner Alfama got it good there's Josh josh is in on that and on that drawing um so honey now we've talked about floating islands let's see Jacob asked about the permanent let's talk about the floating islands a little bit we work with Bruce kanya and con you with floating islands in it national we've been up there I don't know I've been up there probably three or four times and and we went up there you've been up there with me once with a pheasant hunting we bought the pheasant hunting trip and a fawn balls conference auction you know so we went up there and got to hang out with him there it Neera yeah they're only I don't Yellowstone River near Billings Montana and Bruce is an amazing inventor he's invented some things you'd never dream of the floating islands basically are about a six inch thick matrix of plastic where they float in the water and you put a special kind of sterile topsoil sterile meaning no seeds it's not sterile from the sense that it won't grow anything it will but and you plant some plants in it and then the roots go down through the island and absorb nutrients from the water but above the waterline where the island is you can tether it we tend their eyes on a rope and it just kind of moves around the pond quite a bit and then when it gets windy it'll pull the tether loose but it's grown some gorgeous plants and it gives some vertical decoration to the pond you know another one we that not the swimming pond but the pond above that I remember I don't know how long ago it was six or seven or eight or ten years ago where Debbie loves color you know and look at the scene behind me she did that and I was up in a fish farm where they raised Japanese Koi so what better to get her for her birthday than some Japanese Koi so I bought some little koi about this big grub up in one of our hatchery ponds they have a couple of hatchery ponds tail there about that big and then we put him into the pond above the swimming pond and she can see those in the mornings when she's having coffee and now they're I bet you some of those are 25 pounds and 30 plus inches long couple of them have great big fan tails you know about so big and she just loves the color of the fish now I had as a fisheries biologist I had a little bit of heartburn with the biology but we make sure there's enough in there that and a bluegill in there that they don't conflict so you can do that if you want let's see who else we got on here Deon Myers Chris blood from Texas owner buddy from San Antonio Terry Guillory you're gonna gentlemen to yourself well I was gonna say about back to the koi another thing that I like about him is because like right now with it being cold I can't I don't see him but they'll start showing up but it always it's kind of like seeing spring flowers or you know your daffodils will start popping up well the koi start popping up and I always say you can tell when the water in the pond is getting a little bit water I mean warmer and they're coming to the to the to the top I'll never forget that day I was looking out the kitchen door and I looked out to the pond and I could see a group of the koi just going around the pond with their fins just Fanning literally they were going all the way around the pond and I wonder what they were doing they were being pretty for me oh they really were all they might not ask him I said oh my gosh I'm it's like they're turning somersaults all the way around their pond I do enjoy them they're beautiful and then he told me what they did we're doing and I liked him even better they were spawning you know speaking of spawning in habitat this is this is the time of year the nature wakes up you know our days are getting longer a daylight savings time kicks in for most of the United States this weekend spring up fall back so we're going to lose an hour's to go to bed an hour earlier right but the point is trees are beginning to bud of the Fisher shallow and in the latitude this probably say Waco Texas through own north of say Alexandria Louisiana kerbin back up through Mississippi Alabama headed toward the Carolinas fish are getting ready to spawn and in that area they are spawn basher spawning right now now the the thing that to keep in mind is is you know part of the topic today is habitat habitats really really important because you know everybody that's a bass fisherman knows what they need to have to be able to catch a bass but what everybody doesn't think about all the time is how do you get a fish from where it starts as an egg up to that bass that you're going to catch so as you're thinking about habitat improvements look at your pond or Lakes fishery as a community you know you have to have places they can eat places they can go to church congregate places where they can reproduce you know they gotta have places where they can loaf largemouth bass like the ambush so replicating that is real important when it comes to managing your fishery you know something else that we thoroughly enjoyed at that time is getting your wood duck boxes ready that's a good I love seeing my wood ducks you know starting to go to their nest I heard three of them today yeah so that's just something else that spring break a brings is you know you get the box that's all cleaned out and get new stuff in there for them yes and get to start watching yeah there's a pretty good story in the January February issue of pond boss about wood ducks and what duck boxes with duck houses here's a question Terry Guillory said as you mentioned something last week about using or not using pond I we have a small one 30 acre pond in Central Louisiana that is spring fish should we use dial here's how you make that choice if your fishery is important to you this time of year don't use die now I'm gonna kind of crawfish on that a little bit forgive the Louisiana pun but I'm gonna crawfish on that a little bit as long as the dye is diluted by the time that your fish or finishing spawning then you can do it if you have a fishery now the reason is this pond I stops it blocks the univer UV rays from the Sun penetrating in the water so it prevents plant growth so you catch-22 is you're gonna have some plants maybe well maybe you want you know so if you if you put some pond die in then you're going to be more likely to not have a kwatak plant but you're also going to block sunlight away from the water column itself so the problem with that is you're not going to grow plankton so plankton is a important thing to you then you should not your fuel plankton don't use pond die but if your fisheries not important use pond die let's see lydia objectives north checking in from Burleson glad to see Lydia glad you're here be sure and rewind this later listen to what Debbie saying about the ponds and things honey let's go back to a few of the things let's just kind of go around the different ponds of it Oh what am i one of my favorite birthday gifts ever from this lady that I love was a Red Bud tree and we planted that Red Bud tree across the pond so we could so we could see it so in the springtime when it comes out it's the first thing it just pops you know and just I feel really good when I go outside with her to have a cup of coffee even though I don't drink coffee she does you know and I think that's pretty cool um after our home burned this is a pretty cool story Debbie worked hard to get our home rebuilt and her goal was pressed to be in there by Christmas so we could celebrate Christmas well that didn't quite happen so what was the idea you came up with and what we do there well we just lived without a real Christmas tree and we've made a special spot across from the house off the pond and we had invited the kids and some of the grandkids that we're here by then and we planted a Christmas tree and now it's doubled in size no more than you think oh yeah and so now and of course when we did when I did the lights I put a lot under Nathan so it shines up on that Christmas tree and we it's a very special place yeah go over there and we did we did a hot dogs and and everything so it's just another special place yeah that Christmas that was Christmas of 2006 holy cow its yeah 12 years ago almost 11 and a half years ago when we bought a spruce tree which they don't grow here but that one does where we planted it you know gets enough shade doesn't get too hot has plenty of water that thing started off I think was about five feet tall and we planted it probably it's 15 feet tall now it's not filled out real good but the bottom line is we look across and see that and it brings back some pretty special memories I remember to the year that we put we decorated it all with just a bunch of fishing lures yeah yeah we wouldn't bought a bunch of red white plastic bobbers and stuck them on it had some some lures that we were able to get pretty inexpensively we decorated that tree all with fishing tackle it was pretty fun let's see there's Jeff Gaxiola he says what's up bond boss best info on the Internet that's a pretty big statement buddy thank you Deon Myers I have two wood duck boxes on my one and a half acre pond they moved out a couple of years ago how do I get them back if you haven't cleaned out the wood shavings or the nesting materials clean that out and then refill it with fresh pine shavings if you'll do that do it right now you stand a better chance another thing is a predator guard if if you want I can send you a copy of the january/february issue the magazine got a really good story about wood ducks and what to do but basically if you clean the box out make sure it's fresh and if you have a predator guard around the pole that you have an attached to to keep varmints from coming up there and getting them you're gonna be more likely to get wood ducks again Anthony a birthday all the way from Chicago Illinois says how do you convince your significant other to build a couple acre pond I'd like to hear an explanation from each of you please honey I want to build a pond I'm gonna spend forty thousand dollars on it can do that sure honey oh there you go oh really I mean what what is it what is it about what he's asking is what are some of the upsides and things that are important to you you're better pond well I never have even thought about it as being a something to fish in I use it as a we have raised our children we've raised our grandchildren with birthday parties and we've had parties and you know it is just a very it's a place together during the summertime you know I have I have a dear friend that her mom is just about dead but they come out and they float the pond I mean in the summer time and you know we'll get a beverage that we enjoy and put our life jackets on and go out there the kids they get on the canoe and float it I even buy trampoline to put out there for the kids so it's just an extended area of our home that we entertain in Bob and I love to get out there it after five o'clock in the afternoon with our life jackets on and July when you're going down Anthony you have this thing called winter we have this thing called a summer so it the pond has just always been more of a an extended area in our home to live legs move and to make memories with friends and family yeah it's it's it's added living space now I'm going to tell you my my side of this Anthony if I was going to try to convince my significant other first thing I'm going to make sure she understands is it increases the value of your properties well you have water that's beautiful I mean we're all attracted to water you know if just look at a map and see how many of the United States have water as a boarder a lot of them you know I mean even even Pennsylvania kind of tips up in there and hits the in its Lake Erie so you know water is a big deal and it adds value the other thing is is there's all kinds of amenities I've helped design boat houses with a Sun Deck on top where people can get up there where girls give you up there sunbathe you know dock Debbie said we love to swim in our pond a hiking trail a builder a place where she can go read a book you know whatever it is she likes provide that and the water adds to the ambience now never mind that your fly fishing with a five-way trying to catch it to a half pound bluegill if she's got the latest book that she loves to read and she's out there watching you or hearing you or just being with you that's pretty big deal so there's a couple of selling points let's see here Don went around what would be some beneficial plants to put in a new pond with smallmouth yellow perch red ear and hybrid striped bass where where could you find these ok I tell you what I would do there is here's what I tell people about plants if you've got fairly shallow water and there's a little bit of food in the soil when the temperature is right plants are going to grow so I would wait my advice is to wait and let nature do what nature does and see what happens then and if it's place you don't like then you Raticate them and go get something you do because now you've proven that they'll grow now if you want to plant some plants of course my favorite is american pond weed i love eel grass as well so uh where could you find them you know there are nurseries online that you can buy from but what I do is if there's some native plants growing nearby uh it's not a bad idea to transplant some of those and just see what will grow that way you don't invest a whole lot just to see what's gonna happen Chris Blood Texas hundred feeders you know if you want to feed fish he's asking what what do you guys rep Rick what do you want recommend for feeding Cooley well you know Chris since since we're feeding koi in in with our sport fish we feed purina's aqua max feeds now in that pond we've also got feed tray largemouth bass we've got bluegill we got a few hybrid striped bass and we've got three dozen the biggest prettiest koi you've ever seen they will eat that aqua max 600 but I'll also mix it up with some of the some of the Poncho's that they have that a grain-based feed so we'll mix up you know a half a bag of the high-protein more expensive feed with half a bag of the other feed that doesn't cost that much the grain-based feed so now if you just want to feed koi you need to get a good koi feed because it has vitamin packages than is that the commercial fish foods don't have and significance of that is to bring the color of the koi out you know with where we have them in a natural pond they have natural food so I'm not too worried about those let's see here let's see done went around what would you suggest for a beach area let's say what we did we created a um a retaining wall out in the pond down about four feet deep and I've brought it up about two feet off the bottom and then we back filled that with with beach sand we just bought a load of sand like like cement guys used to make concrete then up on the shore we laid down a really good thick piece of shade cloth because the hardest thing about a beach is to keep grass from growing in it so we put shade cloth down and then put about eight or ten inches of sand on top of that then it's a good idea to go in and rake it from time to time to fluff it up so it doesn't compact too much I think that's a good way to do it when you say suggest for a beach area you know especially in the Midwest people love swimming their ponds you got about two and a half three months when the waters really warm enough to do that and beaches are pretty popular let's see here Daniel pal you're a very blessed man mr. Luss great to have a wife of his entrance in and your work hobby love kiss me so yeah I'm pretty lucky guy Chris Blood another thing another big thing building upon does is that a lot about you through your property well worth the investment that's absolutely right I have seen I have seen some ponds increase the value of the property more than three times the cost of building the pond so now you know there's some things about value added that are regional you know if you're in an area where there's thousands of ponds it may not add as much value but it will add value especially if it's the proximity to the where you're you know to your focal point where you can see it as a focal point that's a pretty good thing and thing let's see here we go Brad Lawrence how do wood ducks do with all the swimming activity you know they're usually gone by the time we start swimming they come in in January and we I can hear them in the woods you know and right now here we are in March we're not gonna be swimming in March that water came but you're still in the 50s here headed up to the 60s and wood ducks are now nesting now they haven't started to sit yet here where we are and I talked to a one of our buddies over in East Texas he's got some hens sitting on this there but they're typically they typically raise their three broods if they raise that many and they're gone by the time it's warm enough to go swimming so it's not up not not really a conflict and plus we've got eight ponds on 12 acres so we've got wood duck boxes spread out everywhere you know in there's there's only one pond we swim in the swimming pond yes all right okay Anthony ABAT they thank God she loves muskie fishing yeah yeah yep that's good there's some value-added right there you can have Tiger Muskies in your pond if that's attractive to her Kelly Duffy says a quote from t boone Pickens water is the next oil but you know what if I don't know if you've thought about it but if you go buy one of these at $0.99 that's $8 a gallon and we can you reuse this if we take care of it you know gas oil you consume it it's gone let's see here Anthony about.they again Anthony you're in there with us buddy black water Creek gold and food for koi are you okay there's a recommendation for koi food I've done a lot of koi food research for my 2,000 gallon pond best quality there you go anybody's interested in feeding koi for koi there you go Ragan green hey boss tower bass are bedding down right now to spawn do the best bike best after the hatch and how long does it take for the eggs to hatch alright I'll tell you this there's a great question there's a lot of unknowns in the general public about betting bats because nothing let me take you through it here's how it goes the male makes the nest he'll come in and sweep out a crater you know maybe 24 inches in diameter in water anywhere it might be 18 inches deep the deepest one I've ever seen is 12 feet deep and crystal clear water most of the time they're in water 4 to 5 feet deep 6 feet deep something like that and after they sweep it out when a female is ripe and ready to spawn she comes to the perimeter of where that nest is he'll go get her in bumper start just bumping her and he guides her into that nest and then he'll bump her from the side and then she'll lay the eggs and when she actually lay the eggs well he'll squirt is milked out and then it mingles with the eggs is the egg sink to the bottom of the nest and he'll bump her until she's through laying eggs and that might be 20 minutes that might be three hours she might go off to the perimeter a little bit and then come back so she'll small now here's here's one of the really cool things about spawning bass is the big female bass won't lay all of her eggs at once she'll lay the ones that are mature which are the ones typically on the outside of her ovaries little known fact so as she spawns those eggs she's has some eggs that haven't developed enough yet where they can be spawned so she'll go off and then those eggs are matera they spawn in cycles of the full moon so the next cycle of the full moon she may spawn again and something else is that female mainly some of her eggs on this nest and then when that loses interest in her because he's up there collecting that water bags and putting them into a bundle so he can guard them she'll go to another nest and maybe lay eggs over there with that male 35 or 40 feet away then the male sits on the bed and he guards those eggs and based on the temperature that's that'll determine how long it takes for them to hatch it may be a week it may be 15 days but then he will just be vigilant on that nest he'll run around in circles or he'll keep look people look at if a turtle comes he'll run it off if other fish come he'll run them off you know and then once those eggs hatch the little frogs sorb their yolk that used to be the egg then they'll start to rise and move together in unison around the pond and that will happen for about a week and at that point they have absorbed their yolk their swim up fry and they have to eat they have no body fat storage so if they don't eat they die well being the predators that they are they start eating each other there's some we call jumpers that grow faster than the others so the question was will they bite you know how long in the cave did the bass bite best after the hatch no um here's the way that works the mail isn't gonna bite at all while he's on the nest and what he will do if you throw a lizard up there and hit the bottom of that nest he'll pick it up with his mouth and move it away and throw it off the nest that don't mean else eat it because he's not hungry his mission is to guard those eggs for them to hatch so that he can they can replenish the parents and while happening with a female it's when she spent all the egg she's gonna spend and lay she's gonna go out in the water and this you don't feed so you can catch her I saw a picture of a bass I think I mentioned this early in the broadcast I called the guy that caught her and cuz her fins were red which is early in the year to me well he said that he watched her spawn he could see the eggs coming out and he waited till she was finished then he threw a bait out there in Carter took a picture and turned her loose if you catch a bass off of a bed a female she's not gonna sit on the bed the boys sit on the bed and if you catch a male off of a bed and you release him he'll go right back to that same bed so there's some interesting factoids about bass not a lot of people know let's see here Roy worthy we planted Bald Cypress in one of her ponds the roots and these make great small fish cover and look great that's absolutely true and it's stunning to look at that's kind of hard to mow around but it's pretty cool to look at Victor Moberg do the whipped up boxes need to be on the water or near it uh yeah they do they need to be close I mean because what happens is what happened is that wood duck hen will lay an egg every day and when she gets a clutch she'll sit and then they all hatch on the same day and they're supposed to and when they hatch they she she goes out first and she starts pushing those no I'm sorry the babies start climbing out and they jump out and then she leaves them to water so the shorter the distance to water the better it's gonna be for them and then she hides them I mean when when we see baby wood ducks we don't see them for very long at all Jason nips Ted somebody is releasing koi in our lake how big of an issue is it's 130 acres will they eat the grass also like part you know what they will eat some grass but they're not going to control it like grass carp the the issue at 130 acres is not really not that big a deal you know because you've got enough predator fish in there to keep their reproduction in check let's see here there's Mike Garcia Chico man I was just plug in your live weigh-in show glad you're on board buddy thank you let's see Reagan green thanks for your really thorough answer man I'm talking fast as I can Kelly Duffy what are your thoughts concerning the pros and cons of submerged vegetative cover versus artificial cover especially for establishing and maintaining forage fish populations well here's my opinion about that I would much rather have vegetative cover for newly hatched fish because it supplies a wider variety of the of the grazing foods that newly hatched fish need but if you're in that kind of a situation where you can't have vegetation artificial cover works really really well another thing official cover especially like our friends Mossback fish attractors fish habitat banks is it will soon be coated with periphyton and some algae and things that fish can come and pluck off of that plus the linens on Moss back look like angle iron with the be pointed up so as things in the water call them die they have a tendency to collect somewhat in the V trays of that fish cover so that add some food but if I had to pick between one or the other I would rather have small to moderate amounts of aquatic plants that are native to that part of the country looky there there's Mary blood hey Mary she says what's the best way to attract mallards to your lake feed them now once you attract mallards to your lake by feeding move the feet away from the watershed because it seems like when a duck eats a pound two poops two pounds you know and that's really hot fertilizer so if you've got a small pond and you want to have a few matters you can go to the feed stores right now I was in a feed store this week and they're selling baby ducks so if we wanted baby ducks now's the time to get them let's see Carrie Guillory just signed up for two years for pond boss magazine attaboy Terry thank you very much you're helping to fuel the economy that pays this thing much obliged Daniel pal okay I see what you're trying to say but I don't get it um corn corn okay corn Oh feed Kordich don't wood yeah okay well that's a way to feed them yeah corn mallards love corn I thought it said calm you know oh oh yeah corn okay so um yeah feed them feed them marry if you can feed them corn Billy fish food I mean we've got when we have mallards moving through and our Texas 100 fish feeder goes off and spits out that feed between the ducks and the turtles and the fish it don't last long at all yeah daniel says corn for the Ballards they they look they will heat that now the thing about what you got two choices you got domesticated mallards and you've got migratory Mellors so if you're gonna fly away and they're coming you could probably feed some while they're coming through and they love to eat I do what they like to eat they like to eat the tops of American pondweed seed heads they stick up out of the water about that far and if you've got some aquatic plants in the pond mallards are gonna come especially if they're if they're safe so there you go the uh let's see here what else we got all right there we're caught up on the questions honey so let's go back and talk a little bit more about um if somebody called you and said hey I love your what you said on the show and would you help us decorate a pond I've heard you talk about lighting I've heard you talk about places to be like the doc ways to enjoy the pond like the floating islands in the zipline and something that I you know that we didn't talk about I mean it is we we have or fortunate that our deck right out of the house but you know doing some benches just a simple wooden bench like under a tree you know and maybe uh I love I love old cedar tree stumps to set beside it you know and you can plant a plant you can put your you know whatever you're drinking but are nice I think we've done that in a couple areas down at the other pond people like to sit on them and fish so benches just a simple you know where you cut a tree and then put it on a stump just things where people can when they go down to the pond to look at it there's places to sit yes yes so as you're as you're thinking about it you know it's we all have a tendency to get wrapped up in the biology and the fish and oh my gosh we're gonna grow some giant bluegill or some Irish trappers and fight like a freight train but it is a good idea to think about some of the amenities so Debbie's highlights are lighting plants places to sit ways to enjoy it we design hiking trails if you've got a bigger body of water and you want a boathouse design the boathouse not only as a place to keep your boat have a place make it make it living space well one of the coolest boat houses I've ever seen was in the Texas Hill Country and you go down and they chiseled out of the rock kind of a you step down some rock steps and there's a cliff about a six foot tall cliff that's the back of the boathouse and then they built the boathouse out and against that cliff is the fireplace so can you imagine you know on Thanksgiving weekend and you're down on the dock and you've got the green monster fish lights where you can see the fish swimming around the dock you know you've got the rope lights and all that good stuff you know where you can enjoy it look at the boathouse as well as living space let's see Josh fire has got to go great listening to mr. Bhalla Debi Riley and I are off to be there or go ahead dude it's gonna get dark Oh too late it already is Anthony how long will a three to four how long will a three to four suck it through the eyes six foot Christmas trees send their block together provide cover for fish I'm trying to figure out the interval that I should add more without adding excess debris to the pond two acres bluegill crappie bass tiger musky here's the answer to your question within six years there's nothing left but the trunk and a handful of the biggest limbs they're gonna be going I would do it every second year go out to the same place and enhance those existing piles Anthony if you'll do that then over a period of time you're gonna have consistent fishing right there and by the way where you are with ice I'd be looking at how I would fish it in the wintertime as well you know drop drop those cedar trees in the water depth where you know that your son fish and bass are gonna tend to congregate that way you can drill a hole and catch him in the wintertime as well bear brand Rhett Mike Otto plays Sacre steps to sitting into our pond low-cost and effective place to sit and put your feet in the water that's exactly right what's really cool about what Otto did with bear there is when he created those steps he just put the sack rate down in the bag and it rained on it and got hard so those you know there's no fuss no work you just had that somebody strong enough lift an 80 pound bag of sack Creek and he just carved out the dirt you know what to make the stair steps going down and put the sack rate in there it works really really well so uh Chris plus some of the other neat pond ideas can be found on some of those lake live TV episodes by the Herman brothers yes oh my gosh we love Nate Herman and his family Natan brooken you know his brothers and his sister and his mom and dad there are some there are some great ideas I mean they they built their dad one of the coolest things ever they built a boathouse that's a man cave that looks like a volcano see if we got a TV in it you know I think though going back when we were up there is on their dog they had carved out in the very middle oh yeah where we could go down see tell them about that oh that's just bill that was hey you wanna do something really cool Anthony Harris here's this what they did there was they built a dog where he could step down in in a rectangular hole in the middle of the dock to a platform that's about six feet under the water and then they've got these reels of hose with divers masks where you can put divers mask and then scuba breather I don't know what you call it and then you got a little air compressor that they plug in that gives you just enough positive pressure where you can just sit there and reel out all the hose you need and sit down on the bottom well they feed the fish there so yeah so you they will give us a little net bag of fat head minnows and you could go down and sit on a Ledge six feet under water and watch the smallmouth bass largemouth bass and catfish come up and you pull a little minnow out of a net bag you stick it out there they come pluck it out of your hand one thing Bob didn't want to remind me of is you really do need to have clear water which we don't have clear water all the time well you know yeah so that was an issue with me wanted to do it because yeah yeah and you know clear water is rare and but j60 oh well see but they had a they had a reclaimed mine so the waters pretty it was pretty sterile they've sold that place that it was cool yeah yeah and nothing that's kind of cool that you can do is it's like what brusque and Ellen I'll have Bruce on as a guest before long he in his dock he loved what the Herman brothers did it was there so he had them build him a dock in Lincoln Nebraska the Herman brothers are in Peoria Illinois but uh what an Anthony you need to go see the Herman brothers go see giant goose ranch you guys look up giant goose ranch and you'll see what we're talking about with what they've done but what Bruce did was he he left some holes in the dog so he can have cages so he makes a PVC frame and then he uses this plastic netting that he surrounds the cage of this with his frame with shaped like a loaf of bread and he'll put fish in it and so he'll grow some fish in these cages and then get them on feed you know and then stock them into his 10 acre lake later on so uh yeah I ain't thinking that is pretty good pretty cool idea if you get a chance get in touch with the Herman brothers tell them the palm boss said hello so uh holy cow it's coming up on 729 how do you have any closing thoughts no this was really fun we're coming back oh yeah yeah yeah why not have you back uh what's not to have back hey listen thanks for joining us tonight don't forget hash tag fine boss magazine click like share the video if you haven't subscribed upon boss magazine please do so uh thanks again for joining this is really a blast we look forward to seeing you next Wednesday night

Channel: ThePondBoss

Views: 280

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Pond Boss, Bob Lusk, bass behavior, fish habitat, pond asthetics, floating islands

Id: wDpk9OnCJRg

Length: 60min 14sec (3614 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 08 2018