Today was fish delivery day. Harrison Fishery was suppose to be out between 11am and noon. Got a call at 11:30 that they were having truck problems. I grimmenced when I heard that – I used the same excuse back in the 70s when I worked the for plant nursery and trucks got overbooked. In any case, they claimed they would be out around 4pm. Got another call at 2:15pm asking for directions. They are about 45 minutes away, but it didn’t show up until 3:45ish. They came in a huge truck, not surprising since water is rather heavy. I had ordered 3lbs of fathead minnows and 3lbs of golden shiners for our upper pond that was reworked a few years ago. Figured I’d turn that into a bait pond. 6lbs of fish fit in a 5 gallon bucket with a bit of water. Apparently good enough for a 5 minute shuttle down to the pond in our RTV. No way was that truck going over the fields without getting stuck. So $57 for bait fish for life – not bad.
2nd order was for the new pond: 12lbs of fatheads, 12lbs of shiners, 800 2″-3″ bluegill, 200 2″-3″ redear sunfish – and it all fit in (3) 5 gallon buckets? Definetly saw the minnows and shiners, and spotted some sunfish jumping out. No clue if there were a 1000 of them though. That was $558 worth of fish in those 3 buckets, many that jumped or spilled on the way down to the lake. Think we recovered most of them. Of course, some didn’t make it – like buying minnows at a bait shop – some die of shock. I counted dozens of dead ones, mostly shiners, but not hundreds.
$75 in delivery charge and I managed to spend $690 for 4 buckets of fish.
Came inside and played a bit of Rimworld – a rather addicting simulation game with basic graphics, but amusing when your tired and sore. Dog and I went into town about 7pm and stopped at Orscheln for PVC glue and cat food, MFA to fill up the truck, Home Depot for some steel pipe and 25lbs 2.5″ star head deck screws (~$100 – those things are expensive, but great. I use the 3.5″ ones for most of my 2×6 work. The corral is built with them!), Walmart of T-Shirts (ran out of clean ones), and finally Hy-Vee for bread, (2) TV dinners, and whiskey. Made it back home in horrible weather – 50F, sleeting rain, and winds strong enough to make it hard to open the truck door. Got inside and found my phone: Tornado warns all along the Missouri/Iowa border (which we are maybe 30 miles from).
Fed the cat, who was very grateful (we ran out of food we brought from home that morning). Read the directions for conventionally cooking the TV dinners and was surprised it would take 45 minutes AFTER pre-heating the oven. Think this might have been the first time I’ve used the oven – it had that “first time” smell for 10 minutes as it heated up. Not sure how a 1lb “Hungry Man” TV dinner is suppose to feed a hungry man – was very glad I bought 2. Perhaps the fact that the only thing I ate that day was two slices of toast might have had something to do with it. Bought my first JIm Beam Bourbon – not bad. Logged a bit more time on Rimworld and called it a night.
Oh, noticed my slightly sore knee was more than slightly sore – I limped through most of the stores this evening. Apparently twisted my neck a bit too, it was sore on the left side. Good day to rest up.
Fish! Happy to hear about fish from you. That new “pond” as you call it looks awesome. 4 acres when filled! Sounds lake to me, but you’re the expert on these things. Awesome. Are you planning on sinking some structure for the Bluegill and Sunfish? We used to sink Christmas trees after the Holiday in the farmers pond that we visited. Those Bluegill and Sunfish are the best tasting fresh water fish around. Who long does it take them to grow to harvesting size?
Bluegill and Redears were stocked this week. Bass, Channel Cats, and Crappie this fall or next, depending on how much rain we get.
So a year or so before fishing seasons starts, although I hear there is some good catching in one of my other ancients ponds.
Cover is mostly tree stumps, which you can probably spot if you expand the photos to full size. Also a lot of ravine being flooded by the time the large pond/small lake is complete that will provide a LOT of cover.
You made me google the difference between pond and lake: “Names for lakes and ponds generally originated from
the early settlers living near them, and the use of
the terms “lake” and “pond” was completely
arbitrary. ” Of course, scientist were not happy about that, so the official scientific definition is any body of water that thermally stratifies is considered a lake. Stratification seldom happens on bodies of water less than 8 feet deep, and almost always happens on bodies over 12. Since my “pond” is 25 feet deep, I suppose its officially a lake – or will be when it fills up.