What can I plant or do to make better duck habitat before next year? I have access to 2 small tanks and a 3 acre pond.

Think feed. More attainable feed longer the ducks stay around. Assuming your on a fly way already

Marigold and impatients, only the white and pink kind though. And the red geraniums worked well if you can seed them 2-3 weeks before your hunt. Experimenting with a couple strands of giant Japanese bonsai gives you endless trimming capability for blinds and blends in extremely well with natural cedar.

Not much you can do in our area but pray.

Sorry, but Geraniums are from cuttings and even planting them 2-3 weeks before season won't give you much........ plus the fact most won't handle the summer heat.

On a serious note, try Jap Millet or Duckweed

I've been looking at the Guide's Choice & Blind Spot mixes from Mossy Oak. Also just going to price out similar stuff at my local feed/seed store. The freakin' 500lbs of 10-10-10 recommended is the real costs in trying to get something established. My pond/mud hole is a nice watering stop at the moment but hope to get something growing in there for the Fall. Also trying to figure out if we want to plant/hunt the lower area that holds water from time to time...

1. Rain dance. If you've got water, you're ahead of the curve.

2. Food. Snag some aquatic vegetation (duckweed, smartweed, tooth up, etc) next time you're out and transplant it to see if it flourishes.

My bet would be duckweed/pondweed/hyacinth. If cows can get in the pond, hyacinth may get eaten.

Sweet pond.
Connect both ponds

Jacob645 - are you able to draw-down your ponds? Ours naturally draw-down during summer so my thought is to clean up and plant on the edges of the larger pond as far down as the water goes. The lower pond (its about 5-6ft below the larger pond with a wooded bank between them) Is usually 100% dry during summer so I'm hoping to get in there w/a bobcat or something and enlarge it a bit and clean out the creeks that feed into them.

beaversnipe - I have thought about that but with the elevation difference I was thinking of trying to expand and flood the lower pond - of course I have NO idea how to actually do that!

The small ones have no spillway and are used to water cattle. They get low in the summer naturally. The big one has a beaver dam that is blocking the spillway and causing lots of cuts through the dam. That will be fixed soon. Maybe I could fashion some sort of board system at the spillway culvert?

These are the ponds.

Moist soil management - 1/2 millet. Spray woody stuff non seed producing. Start disking as well

East Texas requires prayer. Just between flyways.

How about this?

An Improved Device for Managing Water Levels in Beaver Ponds

Put those up against the river & remove the well pads and you may be good. That one (A) looks like a post 2007 frac pond.

Yes, A is a frac pond, but I've seen ducks using it.

The big one is where I've been killing woodies and ringers.

Around where you deer hunt?