Karebear

I wanted to give an update on the trout pond. We had our son and grandkids over to play in the pond. As Harebear says, "They are trout". We use berkly gulp worms so that the fish are not harmed and no hook, just tie the worms on the line. There are times that we can almost beach these fish.

Tex Gal

Those are some pretty big fish! I'm surprised that so many big fish are living in there so fine! Only 3 feet deep. You'd think it would freeze in the winter?

Karebear

I tried to update here with pictures of the kids, however the computer and I disagreed and the computer won

Tex gal, we don't get that cold in the puget sound area, and there is running water thru the pond at all times. Right now we are looking at all time record breaking temps and this scares us a lot more. If these fish get too hot we can lose them, if it gets too cold I would just put a stock tank heater in the pond to keep most of the ice off. I just hope the cool water coming in is enough for the fish to hover around. We are breaking 100 and are supposed to go higher with it not cooling down for several days.

Tex Gal

WOW! That sounds like Texas! Is it close enough to blow a fan across the water, or shad it with a canopy? With our pool in FL we always ran our pump at night and that helped a lot. Maybe you could try some of these things. I know it's a big pool.

Karebear

Well, we got to 103 at the sea tac airport, on the way home I saw a reading of 108. House was 92 inside, wish we had air conditioning (don't have any in the car either). The good news is that the pond only reached 69.2, if it reaches 70 we are in trouble. Fish don't seem to be stressing so we will just sit tight.

Tex Gal, we have had a cover over the pond, but I in my misguided wisdom talked Harebear into getting rid of it because it looked horrid. I will need to remember the fan idea if we get into trouble, that would be an easy thing to try.

hooha

How big is the pond again? I haven't had a pond before, but you would think that if heat became a big issue for a few days you could add a few bags of ice to the pond during the hottest days?

The fact that you have a spring feeding it continuously can help prevent the pond from overheating - the high temps likely won't affect the spring if it's underground.....

Karebear

Hi Hooha, it is that spring that we are counting on. I just checked the water temp this morning and it is down to 62. The heat wave is not over, but it should only hit the mid to high 80's today and back up to the 90's for the weekend. The pond is around 8,000 gal give or take a few hundred. I thought about floating ice in it but as large as the pond is I don't know how feasable it would be. My future plan is to build a small dock into it for shade and to hide hoses and such, just have not had time to do this project yet.

Karebear

Harebear found this frog in the small pond below the trout pond. He was feeding it earthworms and it would just gobble them up. It is summer now and the frog is hiding elsewhere. Harebear found the pond all stirred up today and discovered that one of the trout spawned. We won't get any fry from this the eggs are all eaten.

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Karebear

We just went out to look at the pond and the trout are spawning today. We thought you might enjoy these pictures. We are not set up to raise fry, maybe in the future we will be able to

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chunkylover817

hehe nice! lovely pond too btw, looks really natural, almost like a river pool