Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? Hello! - Pic Heavy

New here. Am getting ready to stock a pond and was directed here from another forum.

Anyways, I had a pond here on the property that was dug in 1947. Never was cleaned out. I bought the place and stocked it 6 years ago with 200 catfish. I didn't know it at the time, but the tank was only about 5' at it's deepest point. Went real well for the first couple of years. Fish were growing nicely and were fairly easy to catch.

Then all of the sudden we had no rain and water got low and never caught another. Well with this years drought, it finally went completely dry. So, I took the opportunity to make a mess.

Didn't feel like sitting on the house on one fine Saturday 2 weeks ago. So I went outside, got on my little tractor and started this.




I quickly realized I may had started a bigger project than I had anticipated. The mess quickly turned into this.


The tank had silted in about 3.5-4 feet. Finally, I had to borrow this from a buddy.


With the bigger tractor, the progression was much better and the project went like this.






I did not get a final picture with the sides bowled out better and the rock structure I built in the bottom due to heavy rains coming and needing to finish up before they hit.

I had 20 hours machine time on this tank and it is near full after getting 5.5" of rain in 17 hours. It now looks like this.


Now I need to get some grass seed down, stock it and wait for it to fully fill and the mud settle.

It is 11' deep but I have 0 clue how much water it actually holds. I need to calculate the "acre feet". Anyone's best guess?

It appears that the pond is approximately round. If that is true we can figure the acre feet just knowing the diameter and the average depth. It isn't round but only appears that way then we would need a drawing with dimensions around the perimeter and an average depth.

Acre feet calculations are as accurate as the input numbers.

Pond looks good! Have you considered some type of back up water source so you can keep it from "going dry" again?

Welcome to the Forum, Jason!!

I will measure the distance across with the range finder tonight.

As for keeping it from going dry again I think I have that handled......hopefully. I built a terrace to fee this pond. The pond is 20 feet below an agriculture field (wheat). I always just assumed it caught water from that.

After this weekends downpour and watching the pond fill up, it is evident that without the terrace, it barely ever caught water. Just too many places for it to go around. So hopefully it will catch more now and stay full on less rain.

What I really have to figure out is how to keep it from silting in again. As mentioned, the wheat field runoff feeds this. It was plowed 2 days before this downpour. I need to stop the dirt and let the water in?????

Thanks

Jason,

Here is a link to a pond calculator from a fish farm that I utilized for my pond.

http://www.dunnsfishfarm.com/pond_calculator.htm

If there is any way possible to build a small pond that the terraced water has to run thru before it reaches that main pond, the terraced pond will catch most of the silt run-off. The smaller terraced pond would be easier to clean out on a more frequent basis.