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When I decided to get an allotment, one of the first things I planned to do was to dig a pond. as it happened, the allotment I received already had an established pond so I was well happy about that.
I have a pond in my garden at home and the frogs in it were quadrupel decking all over the place and I was awash with frogspawn so I transfered some to my lottie pond. Unfortunately I also have small fish in the pond, probably sticklebacks, and I fear they ate all the tadpoles because since the taddies appeared, I've not seen a single one of them swimming about. I decided therefore to try to get rid of the fish. I don't want to kill them though so I bought a net and planned to dispose of them in a local stream where they should be able to live okay.
I first used the net last weekend. At first, I didn't see any fish swimming about at all. Its funny but I either see loads of them at one time or none at all. I think they are more likely to come to the surface when it gets warmer. I decided to try a bit of bait. I left the net submerged and then dropped a sliced up slug into it and left it for a few minutes. When I went back to it, I could see that something was pulling away at the dead slug, but there was no sign of any fish. Then I realised that the fish were below the net and were pulling at the bait through the netting.
I thought I'd try to quickly turn the net and see if I could catch any fish that way, so I did. I caught six fish with my first turn.
I re-baited the net and tried again and caught two the next time and one after that. I didn't catch anymore though. Since then I've tried a few more times, but all I've caught since is a few water snails, and yesterday, I caught a newt.
I'm pretty sure there are more fish in the pond so I'm just going to try and catch as many as I can in the future and help give the taddies a bit more than an even chance to reach adulthood, be them frogs, toads or even newts.
I have a pond in my garden at home and the frogs in it were quadrupel decking all over the place and I was awash with frogspawn so I transfered some to my lottie pond. Unfortunately I also have small fish in the pond, probably sticklebacks, and I fear they ate all the tadpoles because since the taddies appeared, I've not seen a single one of them swimming about. I decided therefore to try to get rid of the fish. I don't want to kill them though so I bought a net and planned to dispose of them in a local stream where they should be able to live okay.
I first used the net last weekend. At first, I didn't see any fish swimming about at all. Its funny but I either see loads of them at one time or none at all. I think they are more likely to come to the surface when it gets warmer. I decided to try a bit of bait. I left the net submerged and then dropped a sliced up slug into it and left it for a few minutes. When I went back to it, I could see that something was pulling away at the dead slug, but there was no sign of any fish. Then I realised that the fish were below the net and were pulling at the bait through the netting.
I thought I'd try to quickly turn the net and see if I could catch any fish that way, so I did. I caught six fish with my first turn.
I re-baited the net and tried again and caught two the next time and one after that. I didn't catch anymore though. Since then I've tried a few more times, but all I've caught since is a few water snails, and yesterday, I caught a newt.I'm pretty sure there are more fish in the pond so I'm just going to try and catch as many as I can in the future and help give the taddies a bit more than an even chance to reach adulthood, be them frogs, toads or even newts.
