Catails

[TLBassin]

Not sure if this is in the right place or not but I NEED HELP regardless.....I have a pond that is a great one and the fish are starting to become of good quality,but............catails are starting to spread throughout the pond.  I dont mind some in there but they have overpopulated and I wondering if there was anyway of control/killing them off???????????????  Any help would be appreciated

[abelfisher]

You must have a lot of shallow areas throughout the pond.  they are tough  to get rid of.  

[KenDammit28]

www.pondboss.com

theres lots of good info there about things to do for unwanted vegetation.

All I can say about cattails...do something about them before they get like this

<---CLICK ME!

they are a handful to deal with and grow QUICK!

[flechero]

I wouldn't kill them... they are probably part of the reason that the pond is so good.

If you are stuck on the bank, they suck.  If you have or have access to a boat, you have a gold mine!  Learn to pitch low... meaning where your jig or soft plastic will cartwheel along the surface and pitch into the little gaps at the base of the tails.  They are not so thick underwater and there ARE bass in there waiting for an easy meal.  

Until recently, I fished an 80 acre lake that looked like the picture above. (all the way around)  The deeper you got your bait into the tails, the bigger the fish you could pull out!  It requires heavy line, frequent re- tying and some patience until you get used to that style of pitchin.  Sweet Beavers were the best item in them... they don't grab the stalks on the way by.

[RoLo]

Your concern is not misplaced, because cattails grow rampantly

and tend to dominate shoreline vegetation. Indeed, the presence of cattails

is a powerful indicator of bass bedding grounds. But this is only true because

cattails grow best in water between 1-inch and 3-feet deep with a sandy bottom,

so they're only a symptom of bedding bass rather than a cause.

In all fairness, cattails do provide nesting sites for birds (e.g. redwing blackbirds)

and they do add to the humus layer in a black-bottom bay. Nevertheless, once cattails

grow out of bounds they take more from the ecosystem than they can possibly contribute.

Three methods are used to control cattails:

CUTTING: Wasted motion, unless it's accompanied by burning.

BURNING: Defers but does not prevent the reappearance of cattails

HERBICIDES: Glyphosate (Roundup - Rodeo) is the most effective control.

Sadly, glyphosate also kills other post-emergent plants with exposed foliage.

In the early spring, before most of the other aquatics plants have emerged,

get in your boat with a backpack sprayer of 0.75% glyphosate.

Needless to say, it behooves you to research the legalities.

Roger

[Raul]

Aside from Rolo 's advice you need to add something to keep them under control, certainly I don 't like pesticides, cutting and burning solves the problem in the very short term, the catch is to have something controlling them while they begin to grow back again---------> domestic geese and domestic ducks eat the newly grown plant. That 's how I control cattails in many of the ponds. Ducks and geese eat the vegetation growing in and around the pond and fertilize the pond with their dropping.

[KenDammit28]

I wouldn't kill them... they are probably part of the reason that the pond is so good.

If you are stuck on the bank, they suck. If you have or have access to a boat, you have a gold mine! Learn to pitch low... meaning where your jig or soft plastic will cartwheel along the surface and pitch into the little gaps at the base of the tails. They are not so thick underwater and there ARE bass in there waiting for an easy meal.

Until recently, I fished an 80 acre lake that looked like the picture above. (all the way around) The deeper you got your bait into the tails, the bigger the fish you could pull out! It requires heavy line, frequent re- tying and some patience until you get used to that style of pitchin. Sweet Beavers were the best item in them... they don't grab the stalks on the way by.

they do make ponds good, to an extent.  It is crazy ridiculous how fast cattails grow and once they get extremely overgrown..they're almost thick enough to walk on.  The ideal situation would be to have "clumps" of cattails or little stretches of them and be able to maintain them.  The cattails in the picture above have consumed roughly 5-8 feet of water surface and they keep pushing out further.  They do provide nesting sites for redwing blackbirds as Rolo said, which is why I'd never want to get rid of all of mine...but they also harbor snakes, spiders, rats, muskrats, and many other creatures I could do without seeing, lol.  They just get to be a handful if you don't control them and keep them in managable sizes.

[FlyRod]

These can be a problem alright!

http://www.shannonwoodward.com/cat%20tails.jpg

But don't go losing your head over a little tail!

FR

[Skwerl]

Raul-

Roundup is a herbicide, not a pesticide. I know, I'm being picky.  :