We've got a small pond out at our place we recently started trying to duck hunt. It will never be a honey hole by any means, but on average we've seen up to 10 different groups flying by. Out of 3 hunts, we've only had 2 ducks actually come into the pond.

Other than more camo, different decoy spreads, and calling, what structural changes could we make to help us next season?

We've got a tractor with a front end loader to possibly open up some banks of the pond during the summer when the water level is low.

What's good to plant? What's off limits to plant (legality).

Right now, it doesn't have a ton of shallow water so we're thinking of digging out the spillway to hold water about 2' or so when the pond is full. The pond itself has some vegetation growing in the water and willow trees around some of the banks.

I was once told that you can't make a duck hole, but if they are in the area, you might as well try! I know I'd be doing the same thing as you are. Legally, I'm not sure what you could do and there's not a ton of public info out on this topic that I'm aware of. Obviously, you'd want to add a food source if that's possible, but again I'm not sure of the legality on that subject.

They tend to gravitate towards the rice fields in my neck of the woods

I don't know if it addresses hunting, but TPWD has a manual for pond management that a lot of the professors in the Wildife Department contributed to that you can easily find a pdf of online. Dr. Gelwick treated it like the bible, but like I said, I have no idea if it will help you bring in the ducks.

Are there cows on it? Easiest thing you could do would be remove the cows which allows the water to clear and more aquatic vegetation to grow.

More shallow water is always going to help. 6-12" would be optimum.

water level control. You should be able to get a lot of good duck food out of that. Also most of your puddle ducks feed or are attracted to water that's between 6" and 2.5' of water. Most stock ponds are way deeper to avoid drying up. Personally, Id leave the middle deep, since its most likely used for cattle/deer, and really expand the edges

My brother put in a pretty nice 1/2 acre+ duck pond on his property in Washington county. They don't pile into it but he gets 3-4 groups of 4-6 birds come in during the morning and often has a few on it in the afternoon. As the post mentioned above depth has a lot to do with it. 6-24" is what your are looking for. His slopes down to 24 inches in depth and is sort of cigar shaped. He has the ability to drain it and his other pond's spillway flows into it so that may be something you can't or don't want to replicate. He put in some japanese millet one year when it was drained with varying results.

From everything I've read you have to be really careful about when you plant japanese millet. Otherwise it's baiting.

He was aware of that and that probably impacted his decision to not plant it after the first year.

They ability to draw down is huge. If you can habe a shelf that you can draw water off of for several months, then flood to 6-10 inches before they start migrating it will help. Have a variety of water depths (also helps with vegetation). On small water, the general goal is a matrix of about 50/50 water to vegetation (waterfowl not my thing, but that's what was taught in waterfowl management 16 years ago)..

If anything looks odd, please forgive me. My eyes are currently dialated and I can barely see the phone screen.

I think everyone who has posted has some really good points. I have built quite a bit of habitat for people in the past, including a 35 acre pond this past summer with 4 water control devices installed (flash board risers). As noted by the other guys/gals, there are two important aspects to a duck pond, water depth and food source. I will not offer too much with regard to planting in your pond because there is a great difference in opinion between State Wardens and Federal Wardens. With that being said, there is a lot of waterfowl mixes available thru Biologic and other wildlife seed vendors. We have planted a lot of native stuff in the past with smartweed and giant smartweed being the number one item. We have also planted Jap Millet that did pretty good but the deer enjoyed it too much prior to complete flooding.

"Build it and they will come" does not necessary apply to duck ponds. I have refuse to build some habitat in the past because people want a bass pond and a duck pond in the same instance. They also wanted me to guarantee ducks. This combo is typically not possible unless you have a large area where you have a continuous water source and you can control the water levels year round. Deep water on one end and shallow water (less than 2 foot) on the other end. The bass need deeper water and the ducks (dabblers) need around 18" or less. When I built my own pond, I designed it to be about 10" on average. With the flash board riser I can change the water level by 4" increments up to about 30" total water depth, or pull the boards and drain it in about 8 to 10 hours (pond is between 8 and 10 acres). Being able to control the water level is very important if you plan on planting. As of this morning, my pond is about 4 feet deep and about 25 to 30 acres due to the flood stage on the Trinity River being about 13 to 14 feet above the flood stage. Until the river goes down and allows some relief off of the local creeks, our hunting is no good as the ducks have thousands and thousands of shallow water acres to go to right now.

In your opening post you said that you have ducks flying in the area. This is very important in my opinion because the best habitat in the world is not a duck pond unless you have ducks in the area.

Good luck with your project.

This article is pretty good - looks like a good technique is to do what others above have mentioned - keep the water shallow. The article actually recommends a bit shallower than most above do - 2" to 6" to promote feeding. Anything over 30" and ducks don't want to be there.

Also, make sure you have good vegetation planted. Natural forage really seems to help, as does mowing the area in the fall before the migration hits so that you have large areas of short grass/forage with good shallows, and discing the edges of your pond after the season is over to promote better growth seems to be helpful as well. You also want some areas that have tall grasses and good cover on the same pond to give them roosting/nesting areas (areas that they are protected).

Article
[url=http://www.mossyoak.com/our-obsession/blogs/waterfowl/2013/06/14/improve-duck-holes-by-managing-natural-plants][/url]

We have a DU project pond and manage it for ducks with advice of their biologist. Optimum water depth during hunting season is 12"-16". Disc drained pond and plant Japanese or brown top millet in early July everywhere except in front of the blinds. Pray for timely rain. Millet matures in 60 days. Flood pond in September for teal season. As long as you don't disturb the millet it is not considered baiting. It falls down naturally after flooding/cold weather. A lot of the millet will come back naturally and then you can do anything with it and it won't be considered baiting.

How much does something like that cost to build? Where are you out of?

So what's the deal with millet? Every duck blend out there has it, but there's different rules concerning millet.

If you plant it and hunt over is that considered manipulating millet? Or are they referring to shredding it? What's the deal with the 1 year rule? It all seems confusing.

You can plant it but if you do anything to knock the grain off the plant it can be considered baiting. Even walking through it can be construed and manipulating

If you don't have the ability to manipulate the water level, it is kind of a crap shoot. You can plant all the millet you want but it is either going to dry up or get washed away.

There is no 1 year rule on millet. Just don't manipulate.

quote:

---

You can plant it but if you do anything to knock the grain off the plant it can be considered baiting. Even walking through it can be construed and manipulating

---

This. Haven't ever seen or heard anyone getting in trouble for walking through it, but have heard about people who were given warnings about driving through it with their 4-wheeler.


I personally wouldn't be that concerned with it, I'd make a specific entry and exit point and work to ensure that those areas don't get sown or planted, easy work around.

Jap millet, brown top millet and good single seeds, pennington waterfowl mix is also a good one.

http://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/wetlands/central-coast/mottledduck.phtml

its says for mottled ducks but has some good general info

quote:

---

They ability to draw down is huge. If you can habe a shelf that you can draw water off of for several months, then flood to 6-10 inches before they start migrating it will help. Have a variety of water depths (also helps with vegetation). On small water, the general goal is a matrix of about 50/50 water to vegetation (waterfowl not my thing, but that's what was taught in waterfowl management 16 years ago)..

If anything looks odd, please forgive me. My eyes are currently dialated and I can barely see the phone screen.

---

This - in spades! As far as planting - correct me if I'm wrong, waterfowl experts - you can do grain sorghum, rice, smartweed, and a host of other plants on the edges, then flood. DO NOT DO JAPANESE MILLET!!!!!!!!!!!

One of the most important factors in producing good vegetation for ducks is an early season drawdown (pulling back the waterline with a pump or releasing water if you have a drainage control valve. Its good to do this between March 15th and May 1st. If you can spread this out over a 2-6 weeks it will give you a more diverse seed bed.

Disagree with the "don't do Jap millet" comment.

Hard to get 100% seed mixtures of sedges and smartweeds, and if you find them they'll be SUPER expensive.