Beaver Pond

[Pondmom]

We have a beaver pond created on our acreage. It is about 1 acre in size and one pair of beavers. The water runs through a golf course before coming to our property of 30 acres. This water leaves our beaver pond under a roadway to a small stream that meanders away. Around the pond it is hilled and linded with trees of popular, willow and spruce. We have some ducks although none nesting yet. We live 60 km west of Edmonton, Alberta and it is still snowing at the moment. There is a small stream or underwater spring that doesn't freeze in the winter. Now for the questions! We would like to incorporate fish into the pond that is full of insects of all sorts and frogs. There is a considerable amount of algea during the summer but this is the first year the beavers have come back and there is much more water. (It was an old abandoned dam-pond). Also needing consideration is the fetilizer the golf course uses. Another question is how to keep the dam from backing water up into the golf couse without destroying the dam. What grasses or weeds to plant for waterfowl and birds?

[egon]

Blackbirds like cattails to nest in. Marsh wrens will also nest in the cattails. For fish why not try a dozen or so trout fingerlings or larger. They are readily available and you can get them in different sizes. They may even attract a Blue Heron Or Bittern

How will the keep the fish in the pond from swimming away upstream?

The present snowfall is just a warmup for the late May fall of 30 or so centimeters.

Egon

[Pondmom]

As for the fish leaving my pond I could screen the culverts with a mesh appropriate for the size of the fish. It would stop the muskrats from swiming into the golf course but I am sure they can walk across the path, about 6 feet to the next water trap.
What May snow are you talking about? Enough winter already!!
Do I presume if the rats and beaver can live here the water is safe for fish? Would goldfish keep the bottom clean or will trout do that also? There are snails in the water. I wonder why the gueese won't land this time. They have been here 4 out of 5 years and now that the pond is renewed and full they only seem to land and go. I would think the pond should be teeming with ducks but only one pair so far. I hope it is only the weather holding them back...... or maybe to many choice water holes!

[MarkV]

Pondmom,

Hope you have better luck with your beaver than I did. It didn't matter what we did to breach their dam so the water would not back up. Amazing how fast they could repair my best efforts.

As to fish I would take a look at www.PONDBOSS.COM and participate in their discussion group. Very nice people there with quite a few pond management professionals willing to share their experience with those who have questions. I am sure you could get some good advice as to the type and volume of fish to stock in your size pond.

MarkV

[Pat]

Thanks for posting the PondBoss URL. Great resource. They don't say "busy as a beaver" for nothing. Beaver work like Trojans to repair damage to their dam "improvements." Unfortunately their "assistance" is often unwanted. I trap them to preserve the remaining large old trees near any of my 10 ponds. I have no "humane", i.e. non-lethal means of discouraging them that is practical. Too many trees to erect barriers or keep painting with expensive chemicals. Wish it wren't so.

Rice, millet, and the like (cereal/grain plants that like wet feet) are good attractions to waterfowl. Deer feeders with timer can be used to put out grain while waiting to grow some. We hand sow corn at the water's edge (stops most crow feeding) and several species of ducks like it. Unfortunately we have never had a duck stay and nest. We had some pretty good candidate pairs a few times but our large mouth bass eat the smaller species of water fowl like American Widgeons, even mallards. So if a pair raised a brood it would just be fish food.

A little fertilizer from upstream isn't all bad as it increases plant growth which supports prey fish for the predator varieties. If you get too much algae and the like you may need to add grass carp. Hopefully the golf courses greens keepers aren't dumping in chemicals that you don't want. They might use algicides, herbicides, floculants, or whatever to keep their water hazards looking good. I'd check.

Pat

[egon]

Pat:
After hearing about all the tornadoes I was thinking you might just drop in with the passing wind.

Egon

[Pat]

Come on Tot... Oops, where are my ruby slippers... Lets see now, who roped the tornado?

Actually we have only been into the saferoom once this year (for about 30 minutes) when the town of 400 folks a mile away was named on a NOAA weather alert broadcast. A few days ago we had lunch on the sun porch a few steps from the saferoom due to a weather alert. There was a super cell 15 miles west of us headed our way at 50 mph. It had 70 mph winds and hail larger than baseballs. We got 1/2 inch of rain and just a light sprinkling of pea sized hail as the storm made its closest approach to us, missing us to the north by a minimum of 2 miles (as measured by time difference between lightning flashes and the associated thunder.)

Just in case there is a reader who isn't familiar with the lightning distance estimating technique, here it is...

When you see the flash, start counting seconds and stop counting when you hear the thunder. The distance to the lightning is 5 seconds per mile. Say you count (or time with watch) and get 9 seconds. That is 1.8 miles (9/5 = 1.8) 3 seconds would be 0.6 miles. If the thunder is less than half a second behind the flash then the lightining is less than a block away. This is based on the assumption that the light gets to you so fast it might as well be considered instantaneous (you can't time the difference with a stop watch.) The speed of sound is about 1130 feet per second (at standard temp and pressure.) A mile is 5280 feet. Put this alltogether and you get an estimate that is well within 10% which is just fine for most purposes. (Take notes, this IS on the quiz!)

I usually don't get too excited unless the lightning is less than a mile away and getting closer. I can recall a few different times while flying model airplanes on stainless steel cables when thunderstorms were approaching. Sparks would jump from the wires to our hands. If you loop a finger around one of the wires then you constantly drain off the charge and it doesn't build up to a high voltage (this stops those pesky and anoying sparks untill you are hit by lightning.) We learned to just fly low into some tall grass or weeds to stop the engine rather than try to wait till we ran out of fuel to make a normal landing. Ben F. didn't have much on us except brains.

Oh yeah, before you think we were entirely stupid... NOTE: the thunderstorm would come along after we were alreqady flying, we didn't purposely go flying in a thunderstorm.

Patrick