Successful racoon defense
 

I took several old tomato cages. With wire cutters I cut them up,
twisted them, interlocked them, and anchored them with wire and fishing
line to 4 heavy flagstones. The stones are also set to create crevaces.

My idea was to keep the racoons from sweeping their arms through
the water and herding the fish around. In six weeks I have lost only
one of eight fish.
There is no sign of racoons even coming over to try anymore.
Sitting on metal prongs is too uncomfortable for them and they can't
get at the fish.
The pond doesn't look quite as nice as it used to, but most of
the metal work is below the water line. I've found that the prongs that
protrude have the benefit of becoming bird perches.
Understand that this is just a 50 gallon suburban pond, so the
racoons are blocked from any entry to the water. I'm sure in a bigger
pond they could flush the fish out of the cages and hunt them down.
In other years the racoons were catching them so easily that they
only ate the fish heads and tossed the bodies up into the grass(exactly
like you see bears do during a salmon run). With all the carnage I
nearly gave up on keeping fish at all. I feel like I have an answer. I
hope someone can use it.

Glad you found a method to thwart
the old raccoon!!

kathy :-)

Can you post this on a web page? Sounds like a lot of work for 50 gallons
of pond? Figure I must be missing something. ~ jan

On 16 Jul 2005 19:44:13 -0700, "emceemc" wrote:

I took several old tomato cages. With wire cutters I cut them up,
twisted them, interlocked them, and anchored them with wire and fishing
line to 4 heavy flagstones. The stones are also set to create crevaces.

My idea was to keep the racoons from sweeping their arms through
the water and herding the fish around. In six weeks I have lost only
one of eight fish.
There is no sign of racoons even coming over to try anymore.
Sitting on metal prongs is too uncomfortable for them and they can't
get at the fish.
The pond doesn't look quite as nice as it used to, but most of
the metal work is below the water line. I've found that the prongs that
protrude have the benefit of becoming bird perches.
Understand that this is just a 50 gallon suburban pond, so the
racoons are blocked from any entry to the water. I'm sure in a bigger
pond they could flush the fish out of the cages and hunt them down.
In other years the racoons were catching them so easily that they
only ate the fish heads and tossed the bodies up into the grass(exactly
like you see bears do during a salmon run). With all the carnage I
nearly gave up on keeping fish at all. I feel like I have an answer. I
hope someone can use it.

~Power to the Porg, Flow On!~

It wasn't a lot of work, though I did have a good pair of wire
cutters. Maybe you are thinking that there would not be room in a fifty
gallon pond for all this: there is. The cages are much cut down and
scrunched down. One cage attached to a stone is reduced basically to
just three upright prongs.