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Question about thick grass and outboard

J

jard

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Sep 8, 2012
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Location
Brentwood
I have new access to a farm pond, its huge, prolly 30 acres. It has a great bass population. My good friend has been fishing it for years and caught numerous big bass out of it. This year it is overrun with grass. The pond averages 10 ft deep and the grass in some places is matted. He's dumped some different chemicals to control it and we've added some sterile grass carp to eat it. we've tried to fish it from the bank and we've put a 14' jon boat and trolling motor in it (that we have used in the past) but the grass is so thick that even that boat gets stuck in the thick stuff.

My question is, I have a 19' fish and ski with a strong 150 yamaha w/ stainless prop. I have a solid area to launch w/ no problems. What are the consequences of running my outboard in there? will it chop up the grass at idle or will it get clogged down. Its not big enough for me to get on plane and run end to end as its round, but I was thinking of launching and fishing and trying to chop some of the grass up as we go. Will it do harm to my motor??? there are open areas in the middle that I could troll around but I would like to run some of that grass.
 
I'm not sure what would happen to your outboard. If it clogs the water intake, there will be issues.

One potential issue is what happens to the grass that you cut up. If it sinks to the bottom of the pond, it will decompose and that process will take oxygen from the water. It doesn't take much of that this time of year to kill a bunch of fish due to oxygen depletion.

A better plan might be one of the cutting rakes (on a rope) that you throw out and it cuts and grabs the grass as you pull it in:

https://weedrazers.com/product/weed-rak ... pond-rake/
 
if its milfoil, that craps will wind around a prop. sometimes you can reverse it hard and get it off but some of the time you have to cut it out. it also clogs jet intakes.

like SCN said, if you kill a bunch of it better remove it or it sill stagnate a pond. my son had the same problem with his pond and bought one of those rakes. a lot of work for even a small 1/2 acre pond but it cleaned it up.
 
thanks guys. I didnt think of the dead grass killing fish. May look into the rake but its a huge pond and it would a take a full year to get it out.
 
While duck hunting I've run outboards through thick mats of milfoil and other aquatic vegetation for years (actually decades) and NEVER had a problem of any kind. Sometimes there might be enough wrap around the foot enough to hamper forward motion, in which case you simply tilt or trim it up and it will slide off. Or wrap on prop but as previously noted, hitting reverse for a few seconds will fix that.

That said, (and as previously noted) changing live, living vegetation to dead vegetation can potentially impact your water quality. Dead vegetation begins to decompose, eating up oxygen in the water rather than producing oxygen.

I seriously doubt you could kill enough to impact a 30-acre lake but it's not going to help.
 

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