FISH RELEASE IN OUR BASS POND...What the heck are they?

hey there folks this is Josh Donnie rich farmer welcome back to the farm it's another beautiful day as you can tell here on the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina and today we're going to be talking a bit about Pond Science ok so we've got our pond here it's a about a 2 and 1/2 acre farm pond and we have some grass issues in our pond in other words when you come out here to go fish and your reel in if you hit the bottom you're gonna pull the water grass about this big out so today we're going to talk you through and show you what we're going to do to help control the grass here in our farm pond and this could apply to your farm pond to a pond in a neighborhood or to a pond pretty much anywhere it's all about pond science here today on the Stoney Ridge farm all right free to word freedom [Music] that's my freedom I tuned as well as you can keys alright guys so here's what you need to know this is a two and a half acre farm pond right here we do not let our livestock in our waterways here on the farm we're trying to do everything the right way we are building fence and if you caught the last video on the farm blog we're getting ready to have the fence videos coming out hopefully tomorrow so what we're going to be doing here is introducing a species of fish to our pond that we put in about every year and I put about five to ten of these fish in per year they are called sterile grass carp these sterile grass carp will go in and they'll graze this grass I'll get you a little shot of what the grass looks like right now so that is the grass that the sterile grass carp will eat now the stocking rate for these sterile grass carp and I'm going to show them to you here in a second the suspense might be killing you they're all in bags over here and we're going to be stocking two ponds today on the farm today we're going to put five grass carp in here last year I put seven grass carp in this pond and it cleaned it up so this was not pristine and beautiful when we bought our property it was a slimy nasty looking absolute disaster of a mess and what we've done is restore this ecosystem we still leave some grass on the sides of the pond banks here and we still leave a little bit of grass we don't want to over populate our pond with grass carp and eat all the grass because that's going to take away some of the fish habitat we also throw old stumps and Christmas trees and all kinds of stuff in here to help with fish habitat so we grow big bass one of my neighbors was over here fishing the other day pulled a 6.1 pound bass out of our farm pond that is awesome unbelievable so that really tells you that the ecosystem is doing well here in this pond so what we've got I'm going to reach over here and grab the bag of carp and we need to get them in the pond pretty quick here so that's why I'm talking and moving fast let's grab the bag they don't like to be bothered these are big fish guys big fish these are your sterile grass carp now what we're going to do this water is probably 20 degrees cooler than the air outside and probably 5 degrees cooler than the pond and we've got to acclimate these fish so what we're going to do is slowly introduce a little water and we only have a little bit of water here and we'll slowly introduce this water and we're also going to post a link down on the website - I believe it's called Arkansas pond stockers and we're gonna share this video with those guys too so we're gonna start introducing these guys into the water and they're gonna do the job of keeping our pond clean so no more green slime on the top of the pond these are herbivorous fish they're herbivores they are cows for the pond awesome let's get them in there ok so what you guys need to be thinking here it's 90 degrees outside that means the top of this water is probably going to be close to the 75 to 78 degree range a little science for you when acre foot of water is 1 foot of water over an entire acre and that's 326,000 gallons and that amazing again the stocking rate and these rubber bands are up top dude there we go so again the stocking rate is around 10 to 12 per acre we've already stocked this pond year after year and we put about five a year in here I'm gonna say this will make a total 15 or 20 fish in this pond I don't want to put too many in so we're gonna introduce a little bit of this water just a little bit and it's not much warmer than the water that's in the bag these fish are skittish and when we start releasing them you'll see why if it's really really hot in the heat of the summer you might want to walk out in your pond just a little ways so that you can acclimate your fish appropriately introduce just a little bit here a little bit there if you had a mason jar or some clean type of a jar that would work also and over about three to five minutes that's how long it takes to introduce these fish into the pond we've got another bag we're going to put in our smaller pot this is something that you could do and let me show you this grass I'm just gonna put reach out in here and get you some this is the grass that I'm talking about that that water grass that grows in there it's not very thick and it only goes out probably about 15 feet out into the water but if you're fishing out here and you're reeling in you're catching a lot of grass every time you fish so we've been about four minutes now and we're gonna let the fish ooze out now these fish are big they I don't want I'm reaching in the bag here probably shouldn't be touching them but they're about that big okay so they're about seven inches something like that go just that fine so it's just that simple if you've got a pond that's covered in lilies or you have a grass problem in your pond and you want to get it under control and you don't want to use chemicals and poison your pond then this is a way to do it now there are several chemicals out there that you can put in that will block sunlight through the water but that just basically is very non selective in other words that's going to kill everything and we don't want to kill everything we want to keep our little ecosystem we've got fish habitat all through here we've got bass habitat we've got bluegill brim perch catfish all sorts of fish in our little farm pond here and this is one way to maintain your farm pond without putting any chemicals in now I've got another bag of fish right in here and we're going to go right across the way to our other new pond all right we're over here to the other pond I might as well talk to you and show you this - we're gonna start introducing our fish what you need to know the reason the grass carp are so big when you get them there again six or seven or even eight maybe 10 inches the reason they're so big is because predators predation okay so predator fish will gobble them up now we know this pond only has catfish in it and those catfish are pretty small but for predation purposes these fish are expensive so the 10 fish that I bought cost around 155 to 160 bucks they're somewhere around fifteen dollars a piece so they're expensive and they're worth their weight in gold because once again they're gonna eliminate that from your pond that's what this is all about holistic pond management doing things right awesome they swam right on I hope to see you again here on the Stoney Ridge farm Channel please jump in pound that like button subscribe to the channel I'd love to have you back and I thank you a whole lot for listening and hopefully you learned a little something today alright and again these are from Arkansas pond stalkers I'll post a link to their website and their phone number down below I'm not in Arkansas they travel all over the country and they go to different farm stores like tractor supply our local Y&W farm supplies where I pick these up and they basically travel the country and sell fish for your fish pot there some and they'll give you a lot of info if you need it thanks a lot guys we'll see you next time on Stoney Ridge farm right [Music] Pierce we had some ways to bestow Tyrion Oh