Well I�ll tell ya� back in January we found a couple of local ponds that were pretty good to fish.(Rare for West Houston) Easily accessible from the road, not far from the house�actually caught fish, you know what I mean? Then something happened in mid February. We had a lot of rain for a while. In this area they are doing a lot of dirt work, construction of some neighborhoods and the rain washed a lot of dirt into these ponds. So first of all, my pond went from a nice green to a muddy brown can�t see a dern thing two inches into the water. The second thing that happened some time in early March is the construction people reconstructed one of the ditches leading out of the big lake and dropped the water level in both ponds about Five feet. I was catching fish every time I went to these ponds, no matter what the weather was doing� I caught fish. Crappie and perch, numerous Bass and I caught a decent 4 pound largemouth. Since mid Feb I have gone back to these ponds on I�d say 6 different days and fished and gotten nothing, nada, zilch. Not a bite, not a nibble on anything and I have fished for at least 3 hours each trip, and I have not been alone. We even took minnows on one trip and still got blanked.You name it... we've thrown it.

What happened to my pond? Think all the fish went out the ditch when they dropped the water level? Did the water level change remove all the vegetation and deplete the oxygen level? Can the fish not see in there either? Sorry for the long post I�m just frustrated. I was tearing them up last Saturday at a different private pond so it�s not me�is it?

You'll have to tell me where it is so I can give my honest opinion on whether it is you or not. hehe.... I may need to compare it with the other ponds you know about.

Jason

You probably have driven by it and never noticed it or maybe you fish there also. I�ll email you a map.

anybody have a guess?

The Mexicans from the construction sites fished out your ponds for lunch. Happens at most local ponds in the Dallas area where there is construction. Happened at my son's favorite pond in Denton.

there might have been something besides dirt that washed into the pond from the construction site that killed everything.

Darryl,
I have several ponds on my place, and i have stocked all of them. Everyone of them spilled over last year in all the rain, and when I say spill, I do mean spill, as if you had just opened up the gates. I lost some fish. Through the years we have never lost all of the fish due to the spill over. I have one pond out of 5 on the same 160 acres, has crappie, Hybrid blueguill, and fathead minners. I caught good fish out of it all last year. The water was stained, but clear if you know what I mean. This year we are falling short on rain already, and that one pond is so muddy, I mean it looks like orange clay! I have fished it , and can't even get a bite. All my other ponds are good to go. I feed the hybrid blue guill daily, they feed like crazy on all my ponds, but not the muddy one. I know ponds will turn over, but i know this is not the case. I talked a fellow that said to take a 5 gallon bucket and fill it up with water from the pond, set it aside, and go back and look at it in 3 days. He said if the mud had settled and the water was clear that i could put in so much gypsum and that would help the problem, said if it did not settle, then i couldn't do anything about it. He said it could be due to cattle, or due to fish. I haven't done it yet, but plan to try it cause I caught most of my larger fish out of this pond last year. I hope this will help you, and I do know that it is very aggrevating. I would like to know if there are cattle on this place you are talking about.
George

I thought about maybe something else washed in there also. I don't own these ponds literally... they are on un-developed developer land in between subdivisions. There is no cattle on them or any tracts near there that I have seen. The orange clay sounds about right. I thought it would have settled by now. I won't be investing in a remedy for this situation since I can't control who fishes there. I'll keep an eye on it to see if it settles out otherwise I'll fish elsewhere. Thanks for the thoughts.