Releasing Our Pet Bass into the 5 Acre Pond! (Bonnie and Clyde)

Friends back home, welcome back to Crimson Oak Pond and if you're new to this series, we built this five

acre

pond

over the past year and it took us several months to dig up all the dirt and we had to bring in several trucks. out of clay and we also built an island, a dock and put the whole structure in place and then it took a couple of months to fill it with water after that we filled it with a bunch of baitfish including bluegill and threadfin shad and not long after that we stocked you with these aggressive little two inch

bass

es and we'll give you an update on them here in just a minute and show you how big they've gotten but before we get into that we've got several exciting things what to tell you if you missed our last video, our Tiger Bass is spawning in the

pond

and that resulted in hundreds of newborn

bass

and speaking of spawning, we are in the middle of a Shad fin thread spawning and the pond is full of bait at this Right now, we're also going to talk about our most recent project where we're creating an exact 3D model of the pond and all the structure in it and we're going to carve it out on a table and create a replica of the pond, but the most exciting news of all is that we are moving our two mascots, Bonnie and Clyde, from the backyard pond to the five

acre

pond and for those of you who are new to the canal, Bonnie and Clyde are what we got started in backyard aquariums and ponds and even the reason we built a five acre pond and it's hard to believe it's been seven years since we caught them let's take a quick look at that here he is he look there that's a little one and Liz has one you have too one oh lord we've been fishing for an hour and we don't have a bite and all of a sudden we bend this tree which is perfect it would be two perfect bass to go to the aquarium what?

They think we're going to need help naming them and we started them in our 50 gallon aquarium with a big crawfish and it didn't take them long to get over it so we built a custom 300 gallon aquarium and then eight. months of heavy feeding got over that too and they currently live in our backyard pond where they have gotten much bigger we will see exactly how big they are here in a bit and they have lived in this pond since 2018 and now that we have finally established the pond five acres and fill it with bait it's time to move so I'm building a hauling tank for them and basically I'm going to put a pump in the bottom of the tank and that will recirculate the water and hopefully give them lots of oxygen .

It's about a 20 minute drive, that's ok. I have a half full tank here. I'm going to use the rest of that space for pond water every time we go outside. there to the pond i hooked up the aerator to a 12 volt battery also got a backup tank in case the plug goes bad then we cover everything ok time to start. I went out and got two of the biggest Nets we could find and we're about to start the moving process so Bonnie's here and Clyde's here we're going to try to bring them both in and cover them up with one of those rugs so they don't they can hide. in the coves over there Clyde will make it a little hard alright we've got them both down here in the deep end alright there's Bonnie oh man she's still full of eggs I didn't think here in May I'd still have the egg dinner oh we got shit so we're not going to put this guy in but omg he's a giant now he can't have any kind of shit in the pond there's Clyde oh boy they're all healthy, that's for sure okay i think we got mr jekyll cause that's a giant bluegill right there man he's huge okay we made it to the pond all the fish are good next thing we do is take some of the water from this pond and start slowly. pouring it here because a lot of those parameters are different in that water and it's existing pond water in the backyard ok it's time for me to slowly fill this tank with pond water up to the surface in 15 minute intervals if it looks like the fish are still very good.

It's kind of sad to know that this might be the last time I see them, but I have enough faith that we can catch them here in the future, so I guess I'll just take them out. here in the shallow area release them hope they go down deep and settle out and then I'll keep an eye on them the rest of the day make sure they acclimate to tank temps which are 72 and pond temps which are 76 it. It should be close enough now we're going to weigh and tag the fish first but it can be a little difficult to weigh bluegill so I think the best way to do it will be to put them in this bucket and I'm going to weigh it before I put them in and then I'll weigh him after I put them on and hopefully that will be pretty accurate for him I'm not sure which one will go first, okay Bonnie will go first let's tag her real quick he's about 20 and a half inches long okay Bonnie is five seven one one seven one ok here's the question everyone wanted to know how big

bonnie

was 5.26 lbs wow she's a big girl man she's bigger than i thought all right

bonnie

it's been fun hope we meet you again in the future take care ok girl here's Clyde he's 17 inches long Clyde's going to be 57 one zero zero two okay and Clyde's three and a half pounds okay buddy enjoy your five acre pond look how fast you can find Bonnie yeah it's happening turn around and come back to me straight down at the bottom he's always been a lazy fish ok bluegill bucket is 26 .1 we got him there he takes everything Bucket I think Jekyll's a big boy 27 point four almost 27 and a half so it's over a pound probably like a pound and a quarter close to a pound and a half if you can see there's a bass in the bed right there if you missed the last video we added those little nesting sites it just moved away from there, see you later, friend, I feel that if they are going to go deeper, that is where the coldest water is, now let's talk about a new project than me.

I'm excited to tell you that we're creating a 3D model of the pond and we're going to carve it out on a table and we're collaborating with Nate on Nate and you've probably seen it in the past he's worked with us on the duck house and the duck tower eagle, and Nate is extremely talented and creative when it comes to ideas like this and is capturing every depth change and piece of structure in the pond including the oak throne, dock and table having our underwater green lights that will be displayed like LED but most of this footage including the final table will end up on Nate's channel and I'll put a link in the video description so please do me a favor and subscribe. to your channel you won't want to miss this one and now that we have the pond modeled in software we are working with another company called uid to install antennas at all points of the structure throughout the pond so not only these tags work with the RFID scanner but they also make these antennas that you can customize and place below the surface of the water or anywhere around the pond and biologists have used these methods for years and streams to track trout and collect data for travel patterns for fish in rivers and streams from all over the world, but my idea is to place several of these antennas around the pond so that we can start by placing one around the dock and one around the tunnels that we have added to the pond so that every time a fish swims through the tunnel it's going to be scanned and we'll have that data and we're going to stream this map live so there's a little red dot that includes the name of the fish on this map that shows their exact location in the pond and so even though we may not be able to see Bonnie or Clyde, this will allow us to keep track of them and hopefully get some interesting facts about how these fish that have lived in an aquarium for years react to their new lifestyle in the pond and in our latest video, we took out these spawning beds and basically filled them in with gravel and they have been a great success.

All the ones we take out have had fish spawning in them and with the spawning comes lots of new bats that have been hanging out. in the shallow areas around the seaweed they try to hide from all other predators but unfortunately the statistics are not good for these little ones, on average only one or two of these will survive to adulthood and their chances of becoming that big they are .02 percent those are not good odds and look at this little guy that's hanging around the fry he looks like a little male bass and usually his job is to protect the fry but that sometimes just lasts three to five days and then when they stop protecting them, they are fair. games so in some cases the males will even turn around and start eating their own fry and the bluegills are still in bed.

We recently had another full moon and they will breed several times throughout the summer but speaking of the full moon in May I have to talk about some of the most prolific breeders and that is the threadfin shad that is why it has become in one of the best forage species for largemouth bass because each tarpon spawn can result in thousands of new bait fish that will basically repopulate the food source for these bass, but I know a man named Jr who says he didn't want his fish had to swim to eat, I just wanted them to open their mouths and I think we've replicated that as much as possible because the pond is full with bait right now and it's the perfect time to add Bonnie and Clyde and now instead of eat the gold glitters we've fed them for the last seven years, they're going to have an unlimited shad buffet at the right time to give you an update on prawns If you missed our video a few weeks ago we put 2,500 prawns in there and about 2500 and the small stock tank and they are basically a mix between a shrimp and a crawfish and they have very long Pinchers but we stock them post larva. size, they were about a quarter of an inch long and are growing rapidly.

I've been feeding them protein pellets every day about two or three times a day and the plan is to supplement or basically feed these to the bass here in the next couple of months it's about the highest protein source which you can get for a bass and it will create some extremely fast growth rates which is what we're looking for that's a really cool shot you can see each one of those shrimp swimming around with one of those protein pellets but as this video is Dedicated to Bonnie and Clyde, I wanted to show you a couple of my favorite memories of them in the tanks because we used to feed them lots of different things, like frogs and shrimp, which was always a lot. of fun and believe it or not when Clyde was just a young guy he was actually as aggressive as Moby and you would see a lot of those big explosions but the other thing that stands out is that Bonnie is lucky to be alive because about five years ago years old early one morning he actually jumped out of the aquarium and was rolling around on the kitchen floor and just by chance we were taking our dog Milo for a walk and instead of running out the door he ran into the kitchen . so we went in there to see what was going on and poor bonnie was on her last breath of hers so we resurrected her by moving her back and forth in the aquarium and she took a couple hours but she finally she was able to swim alone.

Bonnie is one lucky fish and a big thanks to Milo because she got extra treats that day, but she looks at how small they were when we moved them from the 300 gallon aquarium to the backyard pond. I guess they were probably somewhere around a pound to a pound. and a half which means Bonnie gained about four pounds living in the backyard pond and that averages out to about a pound a year so I'm hoping with all that bait in the five acre pond maybe she'll make it to 10 pounds someday, now is the time for a wild life. the update has one of those newborn turtles hanging from its registry but april and may have been bird month lots of flocks of birds have been coming around the pond we have been planting fields and many times all that tractor work them I'll lure but I hope these guys never have an appetite for shrimp because it looks like they could easily wipe out the shrimp pond and it's been a while since we've seen the fox squirrel we call Foxy who he loves.

Also this time of year because whenever the tractors are around he knows that means more peanuts, you can see it's a symbol. I'm saying send more peanuts and the bluegills are still doing great, as aggressive as ever, even though it's spawning season. They will leave their nest to go eat those protein pellets ok time to tag some fish or if we catch a bass that has already been tagged we will measure it right here on this scale and get an updated weight but this will be the first time fishing in the pond now that Bonnie and Clyde live in it so interested to see if they would buy aartificial lure and since we have some seaweed on the bottom a perfect setup for this is a drop rig because that weight will sit on the bottom and the bait will rise about eight inches above the bottom and since we just stocked a ton of tarpon in the pond, let's go with a little finesse.

I have one and he's a jumper, you know he's all over them. This guy is 12 inches long and is 57. 1-1-1 alien. Look at it. She chased him. Look at it. He chases him here, on the pier. it was an aggressive good healthy one ok this one is 13 inches long and it has already been caught before it is five six nine nine seven five and this particular fish is called a cyprus we caught it in november and it looks like it has won two inches and a half and you can see from the old video clip of him that he has definitely grown but he didn't move very far we caught him about 15 feet from where we caught him last time. true, we have an aggressive one.

I can tell by the way one is chasing that bait. We caught it. Anyway, 1.12 pounds, voila, he bit into the cast before that, now you can catch him, you can see a little bulge right there inside him where he's been eating Chad. so i'm going to move on to something quicker and that's the perfect imitation of those thread fins we just put in there let's go to the trap alright she's 11 inches and her tag is 57 11.01 there's a good one alright this is been caught one five six nine five forty eight her new length is 13 inches and her weight is 1.27 pounds and here's a quick look at the updated tag spreadsheet so we let you name the first 104 bass that we tag so if you see a letter of the alphabet that doesn't have a full name but leave a comment with the name of the fish below and if we end up picking your name and you make this list basically your preference will compete against the other bass in the pond and here's a look at some of the challenges and prizes we're giving away now it's time to report on some of the naughty activities that happen at night you know the raccoons are always bad and here lately we've been leaving the door of the duck house open because we are trying to get them out of the house and live in the pond and island well one of the chickens is still nesting inside the house so naturally that will bring in the predators and if you notice that one of those pairs of eyes doesn't look like the rest and that's one of those raccoons i don't think it really wants to harm the ducks but i think it's after the duck eggs and i think it eventually scares the duck away and raids the nest and look at it even trying to open the cabinet attached to the duck house raccoons are funny creatures so probably for the last month and a half i have been trying to get the ducks to the pond but i started running out of ideas because they were flying at around it and even landed on it from time to time but they always came back to the duck house we even tried moving their food and water bowls near the pond no luck but one day last week five wild ducks flew into the pond and that was all it took by the time our pet duck saw them in the pond, they swam up to them and even learned some of the new reeling techniques ducks do when they go down and fish around. the bottom looking for algae and different kinds of food so although it took a while we finally got the ducks moving into the pond and an update on some other pond birds we got the great blue heron flying towards the island probably It's going to eat some of those tarpon or other small fish, but once in a while things go your way in the wild and it just so happens this afternoon the juvenile bald eagle wanted that spot on Alcatraz Island so it dropped in and he claimed a place he loves he and our baby Oliver are doing great one of his favorite parts of the day is taking a nap on the walk around the pond and there's good old doggy Milo and last but not least Sarah walking around in the Jeep so now that we've moved Bonnie and Clyde out of the backyard pond you know what that means for our other fish so our smaller tiger bass will be moved from this tank to the 300 gallon aquarium and Moby will be moved from the 300 gallon to the backyard pond and now it's time to feed Mr.

Moby alien friends finishing this video be sure to hit that subscribe button to follow all the pond builds and wildlife we ​​have here at the farm but I hope you all enjoyed this one and see you all next time