Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

[Ericdc]

Oak grove is fairly close to where some friends of mine hunt. Hope their hunting has been better than my friends the last few seasons.


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[Rick]

Fairly sure Oak Grove has nine members (one of which is Miami Corp) with 9,000 acres leased from Miami Corp, so they're in better shape than most. SIL's godfather manages the hunting, and they usually have something going.

[Ericdc]

Fairly sure Oak Grove has nine members (one of which is Miami Corp) with 9,000 acres leased from Miami Corp, so they're in better shape than most. SIL's godfather manages the hunting, and they usually have something going.

Is that mostly east of 27, south of ICW and north of Little chenier ?


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[Ericdc]

I like hearing about these infamous clubs that I’ll probably never go to, but it’s interesting to learn about their history and where they are.


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[Ericdc]

It is nice to have the possibility of having flights from the north and south on any morning in the duck blind.

Arkansas is definitely a sweet spot for that.

We see the big “thaw flights” headed back to Arkansas when the south wind starts after a big freeze, but also see the big flights way up high headed to the coast ahead of those big cold fronts. The majority are pushing on further in either direction to stop and check us out, but a few do.


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[Rick]

Fairly sure Oak Grove has nine members (one of which is Miami Corp) with 9,000 acres leased from Miami Corp, so they're in better shape than most. SIL's godfather manages the hunting, and they usually have something going.

manages for Oak Grove or for Miami?


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I've never asked Mike G (I can't pronounce, let alone spell his last name and Sweet Chereaux, who probably can is asleep) about the camp's organizational structure or even what his exact duties are, but he probably works for a LLC the Oak Grove members have formed and under whomever they've chosen to run that. Which I'm pretty sure he's told me and I immediately forgot. Too far from home for me to have more than passing interest.

Being better connected than I, one of my grandsons occasionally hunts there and on Roger Vincent's (Miami's land man prior to Chad) presumably nearby place, but I've not hunted anywhere in the area.

Guy who fixed my A/C's Little Chenier lease was "bad" last year.

[Rick]

Friends at Cherry Ridge tested a new mudboat transmission yesterday and couldn't get out of the main runs, which were re-dug (armpit deep I learned the day Reggie sunk the airboat out there, and I had to walk out for help) with a big excavator during the last drought. They're now talking about ways to get the humus out of the worst of their ponds when water returns, and I'll be curious to see what they come up with.

[DComeaux]

Dynamite

[Rick]

They're saying the Pond Doctor in Lafayette has some sort of dredge that will work, but all I've seen him use is more like an end loader that will pile crap on the pond's edge for removal with an end loader. But with no way to move/distribute the spoil out in the marsh, you'd soon have willows growing on it.

Also talking about making a slurry with mudboats and then pushing it through portable irrigation pipe out into the marsh, but I have a hard time seeing it pushed any real distance. Guess we'll see - and I'll still be grinding.

[DComeaux]

I had that guy come out and look at my little ponds that are in need of an edge cleaning, just haven't done it yet. He has a neat little machine, but as you've mentioned, not sure where he'd put the spoils in the marsh. He'd definitely build a few Islands.

[DComeaux]

I had that guy come out and look at my little ponds that are in need of an edge cleaning, just haven't done it yet. He has a neat little machine, but as you've mentioned, not sure where he'd put the spoils in the marsh. He'd definitely build a few Islands.

what exactly are you wanting done ?


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These are fish ponds at my house. The edges have vegetation growth that has become thick and matted, reaching out into the pond.

[aunt betty]

There's a pond on the air force base in Rantoul, IL that violates that rule of thumb. You have to fish it in late-March or early-April before the weeds completely take over. There's a hole where the weeds won't grow but it's 20+ feet deep.
There are others too. Kickapoo State park has weedy gravel pits that are deeeeep.

[SpinnerMan]

ive heard fish ponds need to be 4’ deep around edges or in majority of areas for veggies to not grow and dominate

Eurasian milfoil is a bitch. It will grow to the surface in a lot deeper than 4 feet of water. That is the main weed in most places. It's a terrible invasive species.

But, it all depends on the species and how deep they will grow and what conditions they grow well in.

Our hunting/fishing club spends a lot of money every year to beat back the milfoil.

[aunt betty]

That's the one. They poison the milfoil at that Rantoul pond. They've been piddling with trying to come up with some sort of algorithm to tell them how much poison to use. Been at it for 25 or 30 years and they still can't figure out how to control weeds in a pond. It's gubment ppl and they have to vote, talk about it, meet a few times, and stuff I get it but damn 25 years to figure out a pond?

Your tax-dollars hard at work.
Lately you don't even want to go there unless you speak Mexican. Not Spanish oh no...street Mexican.
Yankee gringos no go there. Comprende?

[Deltaman]

Milfoil is the dominant grass in our delta, and the ducks eat the crap out of it. We do have some eel grass, a little coon tail moss and widgeon grass as well, but only here and there.

[SpinnerMan]

That's the one. They poison the milfoil at that Rantoul pond. They've been piddling with trying to come up with some sort of algorithm to tell them how much poison to use. Been at it for 25 or 30 years and they still can't figure out how to control weeds in a pond.

There are two ways to "control" it.

Fluridone, but that kills almost every weed in the pond. It comes in jugs, and you simply dump it in the prop wash of a boat as you motor around the pond. This only works if you don't have a large inflow/outflow otherwise it becomes diluted too quickly. There is a certain ppm target for milfoil. That doesn't kill lily pads and some good natural species, but most things will be dead. If you have a lot a nutrients in your pond, lots of sediment on the body, you WILL get algae blooms. And 2 to 3 years later, you are back to square one. Our one pond has too damned many common carp in it, but by keeping the pond cloudy, we get 3-4 years out of a fluridone treatment. This is the "cheap" method. We spend $10k-$20k per year on this In addition, to the algae, you have now eliminated all the cover for the little fish, so the big fish eat very well for a year or two. So you don't want to do this every year or you won't have a healthy fish population. So we let a lake choke up with weeds, listen to our members bitch, and then we repeat. We have 5 very large lakes, so we treat one or two every year, so there always lakes that are wide open to completely choked with weeds, but some members want their favorite lake perfect every year. which leads to the second and expensive approach.

Dies, what the common carp do and why common carp are such a nuisance, are useful to slow weed growth and control algae. They are a small help that we often use in our kids pond, because we want that fishable every year, so we fluridone it more often, add die, and then we supplemental stock it to keep the fish population up.

I don't remember the chemical, but you can spot treat a lake and kill things locally, leave nice weed edges, boat lanes, ... You can really manicure your lake. And if we were willing to spend $100k per year on just weed control we could do that. We only use that when we have really dry years or to address problems and then only very sparingly to keep certain shore fishing areas and boat lanes open.

Grass carp were a popular approach, but you do one of two things. Not enough carp and the weeds are not controlled at all. Too many grass carp, and your pond is completely weed free and unhealthy for a decade until the carp start dying. If you want 50 lb fish to shoot with your bow, stock some grass carp. To control weeds, nope. We put too many in our one lake and it was really screwed for a long time. Most are now gone, but their are some giants. I saw several in the 50 lb range about a month ago when I was out, but never got close enough to shoot one. I did get a 52 lber (giver or take 10% on the cheap scale) a while ago. Many do they fight, even when shot with a bow. But they are terrible for weed control.

We are having a trial run on some treatments to consume the muck. The weed problem gets worse each year. All the nutrients that enter don't leave. So when you kill the weeds, the nutrients settle to the bottom and then new nutrients enter, so the weeds grow more aggressively each year. Getting the nutrients out of the system is very expensive. It will be a big help in slowing weed growth. Decades of accumulation of nutrients in the sediment add up. We are trying these treatment that use microorganisms that actually consume the muck and get a lot of nutrients out of the system. If it works, it's more money, but it will open up areas where the muck is nearly to the surface so you can't get back there, plus are useless for fish spawning and just support weed growth.

Dredging as noted by others, where do you put the spoils? If you want channels, you can make some areas deeper, but other areas will be shallower. We are in the 100 year flood plane, so we can't dump them on land if we wanted to. 30 years ago, our club was fined for doing just that. They were creating a deep hole in a relatively shallow lake so the walleyes and other fish had somewhere to go in the heat. Now we have aerators and big electric bills. Many strategically placed near duck blinds to keep them open

It's actually not hard. It's just expensive. What do you want and what are you willing to spend? Our annual club budget is $100k/yr. A caretaker, roads, docks, aerators, buildings, equipment, fish stocking, lawns, brush control, improvements, ... There are a lot of other expenses We could easily spend the entire budget on weed treatment if we wanted a manicured club. Nuke it with fluridone let it weed back up and nuke it again works well when you have 5 lakes. If you have just one, having it almost unfishable in the summer 2 out 5 years is not. Nuking it every other year also doesn't work unless you want to stock adult fish or have a whole lot more structure than most lakes.

[aunt betty]

I know a guy who owns 25 acres in Bayou Deview WMA in Arkansas. (hard to believe but it's true)
He has a crop duster spray his weeds so that his place is huntable.
It's called Hood Lake. You better at least go there once before Steve gets too old.
He sweet talks them ducks.

[Rick]

'Tis the season:

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Both new construction with none of the shredding that's a tip-off to occupancy. Also found a couple more litters of these indications of promising grounds that, as yet, showed no further promise:

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And, perhaps, his pop:

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[Darren]

'Tis the season indeed ! Be careful out there

[aunt betty]

Wife loved that swamp people show and has asked a few silly questions that I could not answer so how about you guys take this one on?

Suppose it's the last day of gator season and you're running with Troy Landry. He's got 20 lines out and only needs 8 more gators to fill his tags. Suppose he's checking and finds out that there are ten hooked. Now how do you catch and release a gator? Just cut the line is what I told her. The hook will rust eventually.
Am I right?

The alternative is calling another less fortunate angler who has unfilled tags.