Okwriter

Hi, gemini! It was probably (maybe?) me you remembered! Here are some pictures of our pond when it filled to overflow for the first time in the fall of 2009. Last year was very rainy, and the pond stayed full much of the summer so we concentrated on laying sod, planting seed, sprigging, etc. Can't easily put my hands on those pictures... ?

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I included a pathetic picture below from this year. Level is about 5' down due to the horrible drought conditions. In the next few months, we will hook up to a well with a solar pump in an attempt to keep the pond full all the time.

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My fish are alive and happy so far, though! I saw some spawning near the bank earlier this week, and we caught some big catfish last summer!

{{!gwi}}

Hi Rita! Think about you often - everything looks great!

Oh, I LOVE that setting - my dream to soon live on a pond or lake! Show us MORE pictures, please!

Nice to see you Rita!! The pond looks great and so do those fish!

wow nice place! your place looks so much like the house and property we had out by Lake Thunderbird in Norman. I see that red dirt! Do you have rose rocks on your property? We had a large vein of them running through the back pasture, I still have several of them that I saved.

Yum I can just taste that fish!

And an update on Rita: she has now become a cruiser :o)

OMG how nice to see those pictures Rita..Thanks so much for posting them. Your home looks so awesome.
Enjoy the fish, never have I had catfish how do you prepare it?
Thanks, June

You have catfish that large in your pond? Did you stock it? If so, how many fish did you initially put in the pond? What do the fish need in the way of food opportunities before you can add them.

I'm not building a pond, but it just fascinates me how you can go from nothing to hauling out large catfish in just a few years.

Jodi-

Hey it's great to hear from you! The pond looks fantastic, I'll bet you and your DH really enjoy it. Do you get any interesting wildlife coming by for a drink?

looks really inviting Rita!! nice size fish you caught there!!

If you need some water, they have a surplus in pretty-well-flat Manitoba, north of Minnesota/North Dakota.

A river running through their second largest city, Brandon, has a record amount of water running down, and people have been building dykes of sandbags.

They were talking of breaking a levee purposely, maybe yesterday, which would ease the pressure in the city but put a lot of farmland and something like 150 houses to be almost certainly flooded ... that to avoid almost certain breaking of the levees which would inundate 700 - 800 houses.

So there's a great deal of effort being put into filling sandbags to build dykes around houses.

The army has been called in to help.

Similar problems in south-west Quebec.

And I hear that they either had a new record, or, I think, they just missed a record in the southern Mississippi that was set in 1937.

I remember us having a flood in 1937 that washed out some bridges and inundated a part of the city of London that was lower than the river and the water either overflowed or broke the levees around that part of the city.

Either not enough water ... or too much, it seems.

ole joyful

I completely forgot to check back in after posting last week. Darn that menopause... LOL!

Waving @ nycefarm: Hey, Val! :) Let's hook up on Facebook!

kay, I'll see what else I can find.

Lydia, aren't we friends on FB? I thought so, but... ?? Come see me!

raven: I wish we had rose rocks! :( They only grow in that one area of Oklahoma you mentioned.

Miss Glenda, I am pouting because I don't have a cruise booked at the moment...

gemini: thanks so much for thinking of me...or for thinking of someone. HA!HA! Was it me? We fillet them, then bread in cornmeal and fry them. YUM!

Jodi, those pictures were from July 4 last year, so they are even bigger now. I feed them catfish food spring through fall that we buy at a local farm supply store. Those in the picture are likely from the first stocking in spring 2009. We stocked twice last year: bass and perch and maybe more channel cat. Can't remember for sure! We really need to take some more of them out. I keep the rods and tackle boxes on the back porch but haven't wet a line yet this year. (Tough job...but somebody has to do it...LOL!)

maire: we have lots of deer during summer, fall, and winter. Then they disappear in the spring for a few months. We have tons of raccoons (grrrrr) and we've also seen bobcats and coyotes. Sooner or later, we expect to see a wild hog. :(

Thanks, liz! C'mon up and we'll eat!

joyful: send us some surplus, eh?

Hi Rita,

Southern Manitoba is on what was the bottom of large Lake Agassiz, centuries (millenia?) ago, so is quite flat and several rivers flow into the area.

The area has developed some world-class systems of coping with floods - ran an expensive diversion around Winnipeg, the capital, where the Red River, coming up from Fargo, ND, joins downtown with the Assiniboine, coming in from Brandon, in the west, where the flood is bad, now.

When they built that large diversion channel, about 40 years ago, I think, there was substantial criticism, but they've been thankful, several times since.

To send some water to you, we'd have to haul it overland to drop into Lake Superior, then send it down through the Great Lakes.

Or send it upstream down the Red River, then overland to the Mississippi, and upstream through one of the tributaries of the Mississippi, which wouldn't get it very close to you, I expect.

So it looks like quite project.

And no fishy stories included, either!

At least your fish are large enough that the crows that caught some smaller ones in another member's backyard pool would have a hard time dealing with them - maybe the heron that was also a culprit would find them too hard to handle!

I hope that you're keeping your lines on the back porch far enough under the roof that a high wind doesn't blow the rain in and wet your lines.

Hope you're having a satisfying season.

ole joyful