Trapping Crawfish for the 5 Acre Pond!

Folks at home welcome back to the Crimson Oak Pond and if you're new to this series we built this 5 acre Pond over the past year and it took us several months to get all of the dirt excavated and we had to bring in several truckloads of clay and we also built an island a dock and got all the structure in place and then it took a couple of months to get it full of water after that we stocked it with a bunch of bait fish including bluegills and thread fin shad and not long after that we stocked it with these little 2-in aggressive bass and we're going to be giving you an update on them here in just a minute and showing you how big they've gotten and it's a good one today because we had a 5-year-old shatter the pond record with a giant bass you'll be seeing here in just a minute and we're also going to be catching some crawfish to release in the ponds as well as doing a little fishing with them but first we're going to give you a quick update on the pond and if you missed the last video a lot of the tilapia didn't survive that cold weather but the Eagles weren't going to miss out on an opportunity for an easy meal and I feel like every Eagle in South Alabama stopped by the Pond over the past couple weeks and as you watch these clips you can notice the differences in the colors on their head and we had a few different juveniles come through and it could take a young Eagle up to four or five years before they get that solid white head and I think this one was the youngest of the group he's still learning about physics and gravity and we also had several adult Eagle stop and I'm happy to see him using the eagle Tower more and more and now we got one of the juveniles taking a drink out of the pond after feasting on one of the tilapia but after watching them over the past couple weeks I did get to see a lot of new things and learn some stuff about eagles including this process where they clean and sharpen their beaks by rubbing it on a tree limb or a piece of wood and we might have just gotten an eagle yawn there but one of my favorite things was listening to them communicate and in this case I believe it was the mother Eagle teaching the juvenile how to hunt so she had been around long enough to know when the fish feeders would go off and right after the pellets came out she would take flight and lead him to the fish so I'm happy to see all the eagles making the pond their new home and now that they're pretty much living out here every day I'm sure you're going to be seeing a lot more Eagle Clips in the future but if you hadn't heard yet there's a big shortage of crawfish in Louisiana this year that was caused by drought and dry conditions this past fall but we've had a lot of rain and floods here in the past few weeks so we're going to be setting some traps in the swamp back behind the pond all right we're about to set a few crawfish traps we got a creek down there past the pond and we're going to set a couple different types basically the Crawfish swims in here you put the bait right here in the middle this is the same concept just a little bit different design with the prawns I had a lot better luck with this trap versus the circular one but we're just going to put some bacon roast beef and bread down in there and see if those crawfish have came out of their Burrows so right after the heat of the summer that's usually when the Crawfish start burrowing a hole for the winter so they'll use their legs and mouth to form little pellets and then they'll remove them out of the hole and it'll start resembling a chimney and they'll burrow down in the mud and spend the winter here and this is where the Crawfish will lay the eggs but these eggs need water to survive and whenever you have a drought or really dry conditions the eggs won't survive and that's what you're seeing in south Louisiana right now is a shortage of crawfish and it's not uncommon to see them sell them for around $13 a pound this year which is about four times the average price but we've had plenty of rain and a lot of water down here in the swamp bottom and I think it's just now warming up enough for the Crawfish to start moving throughout the Creeks so we're setting a few traps out and we're going to come back and check them in a couple days we got a couple natural waterfalls here you see we got good flowing water over there Creek coming in this way another one coming in this way another little natural waterfall just like we have in Cedar Falls that's exactly what we're imitating these old trees I think that may even be a cedar right there that fell over here in the creek everything looks a little different down in here after the rain water's moving a lot faster let's go ahead and check these traps see if crawfish came out so I came back a couple days later and checked them and we got a few crawfish and you never know what you're going to see down here in the swamp bottom while I was sitting here analyzing one of these little guys a buck chased a dough through the same Creek I was sitting at only about 30 yard away from me and we're just now finishing up the rut here in Alabama but deer aren't the only thing you'll see down here and I finally found where one of the armadillos was living he was making good use out of this old fallen down hollowed out cedar tree we've been seeing a lot more of the armadillos out in the peanut fields around the cabin and it's probably because there's just not as much food down here in the swamp so they're having to travel more more but I had a couple of people remind me of something in the last video that I wanted to share with you so on average up to 20% of armadillos can carry leprosy and as you'll see in these videos the armadillos aren't very shy they'll come right up to you so it's probably worth mentioning to your kids not to ever touch the armadillos or even play around in like a muddy area that an armadillo's been in this little guy might have just smelled me but I think most of them are about halfway blind and again you can see they're not really bothered by human presence so I checked the other trap and there was more than just crawfish in this one so check out this little guy he's almost got a purplish tint to him and really even has some similar traits to a largemouth bass so I caught some more feisty crawfish time to bring them up and release a few in the pond so I started thinking about it and I'd like to add some different species to Cedar Falls but I'm going to need some help identifying them so if you know what type of fish this is leave it in a comment down below not a very fast swimmer he's just putting around and he's a friendly little guy he doesn't even mind me putting my hand in the water and touching him now it's time to release a few Mud Bugs and the thing I love about this type of pond is it has that rubber membrane liner that the Crawfish can't burrow through so I'm happy that we can add them in here and I know a lot of you are probably going to say well they could crawl out of this Pond and into the other but if just a few crawfish get into the 5 acre pond they'll most likely get eaten with the amount of bass in there and it's probably a good thing that these little guys are hiding in the Rocks because as soon as I step away Johnny and June May make snacks out of them there's something to me that's just fascinating about these little guys but we're going to toss this one out in the middle of the pond so you probably going to need to use those Pinchers to defend yourself and I'll check and see if we can see them on the underwater cameras but the water may be just a little too dirty to see that far but I'll check anyway all right we're going to try to fish with one of these crawfish I've just got it rigged up kind of like a Carolina rig with a little small hook here at the bottom I'm just going to hook him right there in the tail let him swim around and do his thing so we had some friends stop by and Mr Cole who is 5 years old hooked into the biggest bass out here at the Crimson Oak let's pull him over to the bank he's going to pull you in don't let him get under there yeah let's pull him all the way around the dock come on let's get into the bank got to get him com here comes there we go keep your Ro way out there way off the B don't push me in I'm not all right reel re reel he all right now real a little bit here he com wow got to play with him for minute he's looking at you like what you got me for help me guys oh you got a good hook on you got him right pull this way and today's video is brought to you by factor and for those of you that have watched my channel over the past several years you know how much I love to cook but I have to admit when you have those busy days where you're spending all your time on projects there's nothing better than coming home to a pre cooked healthy meal but the first thing that impressed me about factor is their meal selections because they have a lot of the 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or keto shakes which are a perfect little snack for days out here at the pond got to love it I want to eat him all right e we got we got a new record at 4.7 one all right this fish has been caught 69722 that is a big one oh yeah I know I know you want to eat him but this is kind of like our pet so we uh pet you want to you want to touch him or anything or hold him before we let him go you want to give him a kiss bye what you think buddy good is that the biggest fish you ever caught yeah yes sir has that fish ever been caught he has been caught Daddy Y we're going to let him swim off okay let him go on the catch another one good job buddy so this fish is named the goat and was actually caught by Daniel arm who came down in November during aquacap Pond build but check that out in mid November the goat weighed 3.94 lb and this fish has almost gained a pound in just 3 months and again that's exactly what you want to see and the reason I tag these fish and the goat is 100% going to become a 10 pounder probably a lot quicker than all of us thought all right so let's take a look at some aquatic plants that were brought in by the birds if you see this little green stemed growth right here that is the beginning of a cat cattail plant and the problem with Cattails is you can see how quickly they multiply and they can take over quick well the reason a lot of pond owners don't want them is because once they take over they can be impossible to get out I'm just going to give you an example so that one I didn't get the full route but they have a little trunk system that'll go to every single one of these and so in order to get it out you almost have to pull the entire root system up let's dig down here and see if we can get to the trunk and another problem is that it's punching a hole in the clay liner all right so I've got the root that connects these two and you can see how strong it is you can kind of see that's the tap route that's basically burrowing through the clay so I just got one of the long Roots all of this was beneath the clay surface so as much as I'd love to have The Cattails we got to get rid of them before they become a big problem Oh and something else I'm starting to notice we have snails see if I can get zoomed in on that and so this is something that I really have no idea if they're beneficial to a pond or could cause problems I imagine with all the bluegills if they ever became a problem the bluegills would come through and pick them off but if you just walk down the bank you see there's dozens of snails hanging out right there on the edge and this is really the first time I've ever seen them so I have a feeling the bluegills keep them under control when they're not out deep during the winter but I don't know if you guys have any ideas about the snails leave me a comment down below so just as I was cruising down through checking out the snails I came across this and it kind of looks like frog eggs but I don't know now it's got me wondering exactly what that is it's a little cold for the frogs but it definitely looks like a bunch of eggs whatever it is they're multiplying pretty fast all right we're doing another Pond cleanout we do this every 2 or 3 weeks especially after we get a heavy rain but we shouldn't have to do many more because this spring when the grass starts growing and The Roots settle everything we should get that nice clear water and we'll also have those aquatic plants helping filter a lot of that out but I really enjoy the pond cleanouts because I get an up close look at all the fish we've added so we're pumping water back in and that well water is about 70° and you can see all the golden shiners schooling up in it but that's who we came to see we got Mike and Molly trout and they don't mind the shallow water one bit and we've also got the bigger of the two bass named June and I found a way to tell the difference in those two besides just the size but June is definitely a female and larger of the two Bass But when you get a good look at Johnny you'll notice he has a black tail you see June doesn't have any coloration on the tail and is actually swimming through the fish caves but there's a good look at Johnny bass and if you notice the back end of his tail is almost like it was painted black so a very unique feature for a bass and an easy way to tell who's who but just like always they're a pair they like swimming around the pond together usually when you see one you'll see the other one nearby and they've also been putting on some weight and that's something I'm going to talk about a lot in our next video so the 2in bass we initially stocked are called F1 Tiger Bass and they're considered the first generation and when they spawned last spring and created these two they're the second generation and in theory when you breed a 50/50 split of a Florida strain and a northern strain it should result in another 50/50 split in their genetics but there's been some discussions about the later generations of the Tiger Bass not being as aggressive or growing as big as that first generation so we're going to take a deep dive into that in the next video and we're also going to be introducing a new strain of bass into the 5 acre pond so a lot of good stuff coming up in that one man I still love the looks of the rainbow trout happy we were able to get those put in here and another successful Pond clean out we'll have this nice crystal clear water at least until we get the next flood so the Eagles weren't the only ones stopping by to grab a tilapia I think we fed every bird for a 10 m radius over the past week you can see all the buzzards and vultures flying in for cleanup Duty and I had to look that up but vultur are actually the ones with the red heads but we do see both of them around here a lot but my goodness look at the amount of them out here that is wild but earlier I talked about the Eagles sharpening their beaks and that's a process called feing and they do it to both sharpen the beak and clean it after a meal and we got to watch the juvenile doing it on the tree branch and this is one of the adults doing it up here in the eagle Tower and this one's probably doing it right after a meal and I've noticed that tilapia aren't the only thing they're catching the Eagles have found out that the rainbow trout are in the pond and those fish like to hang around the surface and even jump out of the water which makes them an easy target so while it's unfortunate for the trout on the bright side they're not eating the bass so again we got to see an unbelievable amount of bald eagles this past week and they're showing up every day so I can't wait to see which one of them makes the pond their home and even builds a nest right here in the tower but look who else decided to show up to the eagle Tower Mr long long neck and I always find it funny that even up here so far away from the water they're always so stealthy like they plan every step out and you can see this one's even having a time figuring out those gaps in the wood but you got to hand it to the herand they're hands down one of the stealthiest and most patient Birds which is probably why they're so successful had to dry off and thankfully we hadn't lost any fish in the new Pond and partly it's in thanks to Hooter the owl who's always on Watch and you can see here where he ran the Blue Heron off so we got the Eagles running the herand off in the 5 acre Pond and the HUD protecting Cedar Falls got to love it so with the white tailed deer rut going on in South Alabama we're starting to see above average daylight activity especially from the bucks so we don't hunt the deer out here at the farm because they're kind of like pets but I did want to see just how close I could get to one of these bucks during daylight so I flew the Drone out but the one really cool feature about the DJI drones is it comes with three different lenses and one of them is a long range lens so I could spy on these bucks from way up in the sky but for this one I'm using that medium range lens and he doesn't seem to mind very much at all which would be rare for the deer to be moving if it wasn't the rut and it's even more rare for them to come off of the Woodline and walk out into the field like this one's doing so I had to look up and see what was drawing him out here and at first I thought it was possibly a dough in heat that he had been chasing but as he started getting closer and started doing that sideways walk I thought maybe we're about to get to see a buck fight but the younger buck wasn't up for fighting and these two are getting along just fine so I wanted to start inching closer and closer and seeing exactly how close I could get because these drones aren't really quiet and I think it was about this point where he realized something was a little off and headed for cover and dipped beneath the Bob wire fence all right it's time to tag some bass and see if they've grown any if you're not familiar with it every time we catch a bass we scan it to see if it's been caught before and we'll tag it if it hadn't with this pit tag injector and that'll help us track their growth and make sure we got enough Bait fish and things like that going to be fishing with a variety of pre-spawn lures got some decent weather out here they should be biting got him what we got here oh biting yeah it's a good one come on in here let's have a look at you that's a good one be pushing 2 lbs moving in right here in front of the dock all right this fish has been caught 5711 41 and she weighs 1.91 almost a two pounder so this fish is named Rosco and the last time we caught it was back in August and it's gained a little bit over half a pound since then got I'm right here at the dock man they're pulling up close that's a healthy one that one's going to be 2 lb no doubt about that one all right this one's been caught 69 568 and she weighs 2.13 it's definitely the way you want to see them built right there eating good it's a good sign and here we have copper and it's the third time we've caught him and copper likes to roam because those three locations are spread out all across the pond here's one got him got him off that bush that I sank out there earlier or actually last summer let's see how big it is this is interesting got a little black spot right there on his pin all right this fish has been caught 5727 and it weighs 1 74 lb and this is Dolly caught her back in the fall and she gained about a quarter of a pound since then and none of these fish are experiencing weight gains like the goat which shows you just how truly special a bass like that is and it's hard to believe it but Oliver turned one yearold and it seems like the past Year's flown by but he's enjoying his birthday cake and likes to spend most most of his time playing out near the ponds and even though the water's still a little chilly that doesn't keep Sarah from getting in it love seeing him play in in the new Beach area but I've always felt that it's important to introduce kids to the outdoors at an early age so even though Oliver can't cast just yet he's learning the ropes from Sarah and she's becoming quite the fisherman and here recently she prefers catching the rainbow trout over the bass all right s you got a big one don't you and I'm pretty sure that's the biggest one we've caught out of here so I got my little helper with me today out here feeding the deer I'm and again we're starting to see a lot more daytime activity this is 1:00 in the afternoon grabbing a little snack and then back after it again just out there taking a leisurely stroll and the thing I love about this time of year is you typically see new deer showing up I don't think we've seen this Buck before he looks a little bit different and you can tell by the swollen neck he's been in here fighting those other bucks and then Mr long neck coming in right at sunset and now it's time to feed Mr tiger and these fish feedings in the winter time are my least favorite because when we add the golden shiners the water temperature in this tank is a lot warmer than the water temps in the backyard pond so as soon as we add them in they go down deep trying to find that cooler water and tiger is not a big fan of that either because he always ends up with a big mouthful of rocks so we're thinking about transferring him out to the 5 acre Pond or maybe even Cedar Falls and we'll have a good opportunity to do that this spring because the water temps in the aquarium and The Ponds will be pretty much the same and it'll make that transition a lot easier all right folks that's going to wrap this video up make sure to hit that subscribe button because we got a really cool episode coming up where we add a new species of bass you're not going to want to miss it but I hope y'all enjoyed this one and we will see you all next [Music] time

Channel: BamaBass

Views: 519,581

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Id: TPmU47JeQ38

Length: 23min 21sec (1401 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 19 2024