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Spring has Sprung: Pond Management Tips to Prep for an Epic Fishing Season

Pond Management – By Lochow Ranch

Now is the time of year that pond management activity starts kicking into high gear as we prep for a great fishing season.

If you are looking forward to catching some trophies in your water body this year, good fishery management needs to include surveying your fish population, and stocking your fish supply, as well as taking stock of their vegetation environment and deciding on your strategy for controlling pond weeds.

Smart managers recognize these as three of the most important spring tasks to ensure 2022 will be an angler’s dream.

Fish Surveys: Electrofishing

Knowing what lurks in your lake is key first step to planning pond stocking.

The best approach for inventorying your fish population is an electrofishing survey. This key action is perfect for both diagnosing problems in established lakes as well as a routine management tool to identify issues before they become expensive problems.

Electrofishing is an excellent tool for correcting an out-of-balance water body by assessing the numbers of forage and sport fish. Electrofishing also allows for assessing winter cormorant or otter damage, as well as providing a snapshot of species’ size, relative abundance and growth rates. This is an important part of pond management and maintaining a healthy environment. 

Through electrofishing, experts can also ID unwanted species and quickly remove them before they become a problem.

This standard scientific survey method causes no long-term negative effect for the fish. The fish are briefly stunned, examined and quickly returned to the water unharmed.

The survey result becomes a reference point for a long-term fishery management plan. A manager will use it to plan for corrective stocking and harvest recommendations.

Our fish experts can conduct an electrofishing survey for you using state-of-the-art techniques and equipment. Click here to learn more.

Pond Stocking: Key Considerations

Stocking of both game fish and forage fish can maximize the productivity of your fishery. 

After a survey of your fish population, you can use pond stocking to reconcile winter losses and establish a proper predator-to-prey ratio.

But fish stocking itself takes some planning and awareness of the factors particular to your lake or pond. You need to know what kinds of fish will thrive in your body of water. You also need to assess the impact of using non-native species as well as the types of fish that can live together and sustain a healthy ecosystem.

Professional pond stocking advice is key because pond management must be handled with skill and exactness. Indeed, small and large ponds and lakes must be stocked and managed differently. And location, fish health and condition must be considered, as well as understanding spawning and other characteristics of the specific fish you want.

Our fish stocking professionals can help you navigate the considerations for pond stocking to arrive at the best plan for your lake or pond. Whether you are selecting specific fish for stocking or need advice on which fish to stock in your pond or lake, our team can help. 

Fish stocking options often include largemouth bass Florida strain, largemouth bass native strain, trout, crawfish (or crayfish), and many types of forage fish. We are the pond stocking partners trusted by landowners across Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.

Pond Weeds: Get Ahead of the Growth

Getting an early start on controlling pond weeds is the right strategy to keep growth in check this year.

Now in the early part of the growing season is the time to take action. Pond weeds can dominate shorelines putting a hitch in fishing or swimming. Some vegetation is beneficial for fish and other organisms.

But out of control growth of pond weeds also can negatively impact aquatic organisms through a process called cultural eutrophication.

Your water body is a small ecosystem cut off from many of the elements that maintain balance in natural waters. This means active control of pond weeds is a must and you should plan for continuing such steps throughout the growing season for your pond or lake to be its best.

Treatments options include an array of products, equipment, herbicides, lake dyes and algaecides to help rid your property of nuisance aquatic plants or issues with floating, submerged or emergent pond weeds. There also is a chemical-free approach that can include stocking triploid grass carp and tilapia, which are among the most popular biological alternatives for removal of pond weeds.

You may also want to consider nutrient precipitation, pond liming and fertilizing regimes, and aeration systems to promote plankton blooms that improve the health of your pond, keep things in balance, and mitigate issues with excessive pond weeds.

Our experts can help you assess the right approach to controlling pond weeds in your body of water.

Why Choose Lochow Ranch for Pond & Lake Management

Serving Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, Lochow Ranch Pond & Lake Management proudly puts more than two decades of experience to work for you. Our team includes biologists, technicians and other professionals with deep expertise in pond and lake management services.

Check us out if you are considering building a lake, looking for pond stocking services, to buy fish for a pond, or getting professional pond management and maintenance or fishery management. Our services include lake design, pond construction, pond renovation, pond water testing, electrofishing, pond stocking, control of pond weeds, and pond liming and fertilizing. Let us help you build your dream pond that will delight your family and friends for generations to come.

Click here to get in touch to get started today.

Ready for the season? Get those fish stocking orders in soon

By Lochow Ranch

You might already be picturing your trophy bass Instagram snaps. But before that happens, it’s time to get your stocking plans set for the season and address any issues with your pond or lake’s inhabitants.

Springtime is a great time to assess your pond’s fish populations to ensure you’ll have decades of good fishing ahead.

As waters start to warm as we head into summer, we recommend moving forward with spring stocking orders in the next couple of weeks. That’s especially true for supplemental forage or Florida Bass fingerlings.

Fish for stocking your pond in Texas Louisiana Arkansas Oklahoma trout bass 111

Balancing prey to predators for strong growth rates requires expert analysis of your pond management and fish stocking needs.

Our team of pond stocking technicians, biologists and other professionals at Lochow Ranch Pond and Lake Management can help you plan the perfect mix for your particular conditions and goals for your lake.

Fish stocking has been practiced for hundreds of years, and a lot of thought should be put into selecting types of fish, as well as whether to introduce non-native species.

What fish will work best in your pond or lake involves many variables, including its size, your goals, and other factors. Very small ponds under one acre have special considerations, and so do very large lakes of many acres. They must be stocked and managed in different ways and present distinct challenges.

A fish population analysis through electrofishing or gill netting will determine which species need to be stocked to bring your lake to its true trophy-growing potential.

trophy bass pond stocking fish for sale

Our experts create a recommended fish stocking plan that takes into account your lake size, location, health and condition as well as your desires. Lochow offers all of the region’s most popular species of fish, such as basstroutsunfishcatfishforage fish and many other species.

If you are noticing nuisance vegetation growing, this is also the right time to schedule treatments, and we offer a complete range of traditional options and natural biological alternatives based on your needs, desires and our years of expertise in dealing with similar bodies of water around Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas.

Whether you want a lake completely free of weeds, or perhaps a 25 percent vegetation coverage to promote fish growth, our comprehensive vegetation control programs offer affordable and effective solutions to vegetation control and management issues that threaten the health of your pond, its fish and the desirable plant life in it.

For landowners who want to create their own fishery experience, we provide a complete, unmatched expert menu, from construction with an initial fish stocking plan to long-term pond management.

And after all the technical aspects of your fishing hole are well taken care of, please share those great Instagram snaps with us!

Why Choose Lochow Ranch for Pond & Lake Management

Serving Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, Lochow Ranch Pond & Lake Management proudly puts more than two decades of experience to work for you. Our team includes biologists, technicians and other professionals with deep expertise in pond and lake management services.

Check us out if you are considering building a lake, looking for pond stocking services, to buy fish for a pond, or getting professional pond management and maintenance or fishery management. Our services include lake design, pond construction, pond renovation, pond water testing, electrofishing, pond stocking, control of pond weeds, and pond liming and fertilizing. Let us help you build your dream pond that will delight your family and friends for generations to come.

Click here to get in touch to get started today.

Fishery tips: Prepping your fishing lake for a great season

By Lochow Ranch

Fishery management experts know that year-round pond and lake maintenance is key to keeping your favorite fishing pond healthy and productive.

The leading reasons the equilibrium in your lake could be off include over- and under-harvesting of predator fish, introduction of undesirable fish species, and summer kills, as well as excessive weeds, poor water quality and lack of fertilization.

Qualified experts like those at Lochow Ranch Pond & Lake Management can help turn around a failing fishery or enhance a stable one by addressing these various issues in an annual plan that tracks progress and addresses needs.

Otherwise, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service warns that Texas farm ponds aren’t managed at their highest potential for fish production.

Lochow Ranch can assess fishery populations using nets or shocking equipment and use state-of-the-art equipment to collect data and determine the precise program for getting your body of water back on track.

Surveying Your Pond’s Population

Electrofishing Arkansas Louisiana Texas Oklahoma

An excellent way to begin is with an electrofishing survey, which is a primary tool for correcting an out-of-balance pond.

These surveys accurately assess current forage and sport fish populations and quantify wintertime Cormorant or otter damage. Fish populations also are sampled to determine species, size, relative abundance and growth rates. Click here to learn more.

Planning Pond Stocking

pond stocking services

Pond stocking is another important consideration when you want to maximize the potential for your fishery.

What kinds of fish will work best in your pond involves many variables, including your own goals for your pond or lake. For example, you need to carefully assess the impact of introducing non-native species into your pond. It’s important to be aware of the fish types that can live together in harmony so your pond can sustain a healthy ecosystem. Learn more by clicking here.

Getting a grip on pond weeds

Aquatic vegetation is the cause of 80 percent of low dissolved oxygen fish kills in Texas. And the issues are complex enough that expert advice is recommended.

As we detailed in a series of recent postings about pond vegetation control, there are a range of vegetation control techniques. Mechanical controls include pruning and cutting back pond weeds. Biological controls include introducing grass carp and tilapia, two types of vegetation-eating fish. Chemical means of vegetation control include herbicides and algaecides.

Click here to learn more about how the experts at Lochow Ranch can plan appropriate vegetation control for your lake or pond.

Fertilizing your fishery

Just as you would fertilize fields to increase crop yields, you should fertilize a pond or lake to provide phytoplankton with adequate nutrients for fish growth.

Proper fertilization increases food availability throughout the food chain and indirectly increases the total amount of fish a pond can support. Ponds should be limed before fertilizer is applied, which is important because it increases pH and alkalinity.

Even without fertilization, this may improve available nutrients which can support a phytoplankton bloom. Click here to learn more.

Adding aeration

In order to avoid problems, pond and lake owners also should be inspecting aeration and fountain maintenance or considering their implementation.

Repairs could address obvious signs of wear or just the cleaning of filters and   screens. Lochow offers a range of aeration systems and fountain systems for   ensuring your pond’s oxygen levels are optimal.

 

Plan for a great year

Our team of fishery management experts are standing by to help you make the most of your fishing pond. Whether you are looking for pond water testing, pond stocking, fishery management, pond renovation or new pond construction, we can help. A great lake can be a legacy that will be enjoyed by friends and family for generations to come. Fill out the form to get started today!

Why Choose Lochow Ranch for Pond & Lake Management

Serving Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, Lochow Ranch Pond & Lake Management proudly puts more than two decades of experience to work for you. Our team includes biologists, technicians and other professionals with deep expertise in pond and lake management services.

Check us out if you are considering building a lake, looking for pond stocking services, to buy fish for a pond, or getting professional pond management and maintenance or fishery management. Our services include lake design, pond construction, pond renovation, pond water testing, electrofishing, pond stocking, control of pond weeds, and pond liming and fertilizing. Let us help you build your dream pond that will delight your family and friends for generations to come.

Click here to get in touch to get started today.

Forage for your fishery: key spring lake management tips

By Lochow Ranch

As our ponds pull out of the winter cold and begin to heat up, our gamefish metabolisms rise, and the spring glut is on.

Forage populations generally take a pretty big hit over the winter. Depending on the lake, the spring glut can have a lasting impact on forage and the predators that consume them.

Forage fish are generally smaller fish or crawfish that are the food source for your larger gamefish, such as bass.

Between diving cormorants and pelicans and continual predation by largemouth bass, peak forage populations of the fall season are heavily depressed and must rebound in order for lakes to maintain peak production.

This week, we’ll take a look at some common forage management issues and how to resolve them as part of your fishery management plan.

Goal-Oriented Management

As with most aspects of fishery management, establishing your fishery’s goals is paramount to determining your overarching pond and lake management strategies.

Is your primary target feed-trained bass? Do you mostly care about hybrid stripers? If so, forage fish may not matter a whole lot for your fish. Sure, healthy forage always benefits gamefish, but fish that consume pelleted feed can pretty easily shift their diet away from forage whenever populations are depressed.

If your target species are trophy Florida Largemouth Bass, native non-feed trained bass, or crappie, forage populations are essential.

Let’s take a look at the main forage species for each target gamefish and see how their populations can be managed for the greatest possible impact.

Target Fisheries

Trophy Florida Largemouth Bass

Trophy bass require good forage availability throughout their lives to achieve the outsized proportions for which they are so prized.

Good trophy management requires regular monitoring and rapid intervention if forage populations crash. Generally, these fisheries will rely primarily on bluegill, shad, and crawfish in that order of importance, with additional forage support from redear sunfish, golden shiners, silversides, and in some cases tilapia.

Having some diversity in your forage species helps to provide food for bass as certain populations experience natural fluctuations.

It is important to have good forage diversity in both species and especially size. To ensure all of your bass have plenty of food, careful and regular analysis of small, medium, large, and jumbo-sized forage should be made to determine if your forage is adequately supporting your lake’s bass.

Early in life, bass consume all sorts of fry (recently hatched fish). As they grow their diets shift to small sunfish and fry. In the next stage of life, threadfin shad can really make a huge difference in pushing bass growth. These fish combine with medium sunfish and medium shiners to supply bass to a couple of pounds in weight.

Next your bass will shift to eating large sunfish, threadfin shad, shiners, goldfish, and crawfish. Finally, if all goes well, bass begin to push into the trophy stage where they will continue to consume the latter forage but also begin to take larger meals, which could include jumbo sunfish, gizzard shad, jumbo golden shiners, larger goldfish, trout, and any other large fish they can swallow.

These various forage populations should be supported through supplemental feeding, habitat management, and pond stocking as appropriate.

Non-Feed-Trained Largemouth Bass

Even if you aren’t trying to grow the next world record, home-grown bass fisheries still need adequate forage to develop good populations of healthy fish.

Keep an eye on your forage and develop good populations of fish fry, and small, medium, and large forage.

Most forage is principally helpful in the 1-4” range, with some benefit being had from forage up to 6” in length. In general, forage above 6” in length are too large to serve as much benefit to your average native bass, which generally tops out around 7 pounds in weight.

Threadfin shad are excellent supplemental forage for spring stockings with golden shiners a close second. Golden shiners and goldfish are excellent supplements in the fall.

Once established, bluegill and redear should generally be maintained in perpetuity in well managed fisheries (assuming you don’t have a bunch of hungry cormorants or pelicans land on your lake) and generally won’t need to be restocked.

Crappie

Crappie are notorious for boom and bust reproductive cycles and slow growth.

Care must be taken to help these fish have plenty of food at the right times. Generally, fish fry, silversides, small threadfin shad, small shiners, and small sunfish are paramount to a healthy forage supply.

Large forage will actually remove the food base for these smaller fish, which would depress their numbers and easily result in stunted crappie.

Forage Specific Management

Regardless of your desired outcome, a few key factors must be considered in order for forage to thrive. Let’s take a look at three primary factors, habitat, food, and predation.

Good Habitat

First, habitat must be maintained to provide shelter for some of your forage.

This helps a given lake maintain a breeding population of various forms of forage. Habitat like cover is particularly important for bluegill and redear sunfish. Generally good habitat will involve some beneficial vegetation and some non-living habitat like felled trees or artificial structures. Habitat for open water schooling fish is just going to be that, expanses of open water where they can shelter by schooling together.

Food For Forage

Second, forage food must be plentiful for strong populations.

Sunfish diets can be supplemented with fish food as can that of golden shiners and tilapia. Otherwise, healthy populations of aquatic insects and fish fry are necessary to maintain those populations. Threadfin shad are planktivores and a healthy plankton bloom is essential for these fish to thrive and achieve their potential.

Moderate Predation

While we certainly grow forage to be eaten, we want predation to be commensurate with forage populations.

If the right number of gamefish is maintained, forage numbers will stay high and gamefish will thrive. If predator populations exceed what the forage base can support, forage populations will crash.

Be sure to conduct the necessary annual harvest of predatory fish to ensure that forage populations thrive. It goes without saying that no fishery can sustainably support predation from huge flocks of avian predators without some supplemental stocking from time to time.

Plan Forage For Your Dream Fishery

Forage matters. Know what forage your preferred gamefish need and make sure you have stocked the right species. Make it a regular part of your fishery management and pond stocking plans.

Assess your lake forage on a regular basis and adjust management strategies to promote healthy forage populations.

Adjust the habitat as needed, keep your forage fed, and limit predation as appropriate.

Your lake will thank you with smiles and your fish will thrive.

Why Choose Lochow Ranch for Pond & Lake Management

Serving Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, Lochow Ranch Pond & Lake Management proudly puts more than two decades of experience to work for you. Our team includes biologists, technicians and other professionals with deep expertise in pond and lake management services.

Check us out if you are considering building a lake, looking for pond stocking services, to buy fish for a pond, or getting professional pond management and maintenance or fishery management. Our services include lake design, pond construction, pond renovation, pond water testing, electrofishing, pond stocking, control of pond weeds, and pond liming and fertilizing. Let us help you build your dream pond that will delight your family and friends for generations to come.

Click here to get in touch to get started today.

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