keeping trout

[dgurney]

I was wondering if anyone on the forum has any experience of keeping trout in a pond. i have built a pond which is about 18m by 9m and is bout 1 to 1.75m deep. It is fed by springs and has woods surrounding it. Lasy year i put in 6 1.5lb rainbows and 12 3/4lb brownies. I noted thst they were diminishing over the months - only found one dead. My boy did fish a few times with barbless hooks and returned any caught. There now appears to be only 1 large rainbow left (as far as i can see). I have seen a herron by the pond but the water is too deep for it to wade and I've been told thsat all the fish would have been too big for it to take. Is it likely that they have died in summer when the springs were low or maybe a mink?

Any advice or insights welcome.

[Steve Walker]

Could be predators, or being caught and released, but I think it's most likely that the water just got too warm for the fish and they died. There are a couple of gravel pits near me which are used as trout fisheries. They are 15-20,000 square metres and mostly 3-4m deep. One of them closes at the end of June, the other I fished a couple of weeks ago and saw a number of fish cruising the margins looking on their last legs (and a couple of dead ones). I think water temperatures and oxygenation become marginal for trout in summer on even stillwaters of this size, so I suspect that your pond can't support them all year round.

 

Also, looking at what you stocked, I make that about 500kg/ha. That's a fairly heavily stocked coarse fishery level, trout fisheries are stocked at much lower densities. I don't know what the small stillwater fisheries use, probably a fair bit more, but large reservoirs used to stock at about 12kg/ha.