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Joined: Oct 2017
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mikepjr Offline OP
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Iam not sure if many would be interested in my project or not, but I have enjoyed reading and looking at other projects on this forum for the last few years and decided I would post a little bit of mine. I am in no way as scientific as others on here, but I do have a passion for fish, and I just got lucky that this was able to happen. I have been calling it the big experiment. This is how it started. We had a just shy half acre cattle water hole that was deep with muck, and so much coontail you couldn't row a canoe across it. Spring of 2017 I dug a couple spots out near the banks for the dogs having no idea that in just a few more months that those two little holes would end up to be 2 acres big. Here's a couple pics to start (hopefully they show up) more to come as I have time. I'll try and show how I went about getting the mud out and getting it to dry out in a very short amount of time. I'll also talk about what I stocked, by then I might be talking about what failed. There is a wild card fish.





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I've had a couple car repairs start of like that...I just needed to replace the front bumper and grill, the next thing I know... The fenders are off, the motor is out and in pieces, the interior is on the shop floor...two years later the car has been repainted, motor rebuilt and still needs to be put back together.

The labor of love.

Keep up your story, I look forward to reading about it!


Fish on!,
Noel
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I'll be following this!


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Sounds like an interesting project. Bring it on!


John

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I just pulled up a seat for the show. What kind of equipment did you use? I love a good story.


The people who say I can't do it can just sit the @^#% down and watch me. Friends call me Rusto I also subscribe to pond boss mag. http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=504716#Post504716
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mikepjr Offline OP
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The Plan. Or should I say lack of a plan at this stage.
What I was sure about was I have wanted a fishing pond from a very early age, as I would imagine most here did. Around 15 years ago I caught a 15lb HSB out of a river and right then I thought, I have to get a pond and I have to figure out how to get them in it. Now back then I didn't know anything about HSB, or how would one get them. I had never even heard of pond boss or anyone putting these in ponds.

So ok I know what I want in the pond and have for years, now what do I have to work with. Time for a canoe ride and 7 feet of rebar, push boat through coontail and start checking muck with bar, well looks like we got some mud boys. Now I started thinking about the dam, it has had a wet spot behind it for several years, muskrats have holes everywhere, cows have eroded a lot of the top where you cant even get a 4 wheeler across it. The pond was cleaned out in the late fifties early sixties, so how old is this hole. it could have originally been dug with horse's and one of them drag scoops. So I question the quality of dirt in the dam. I would like to push the whole pond back to make it bigger but it would require a lot of dirt, the dam would have to wrap around from back up towards the front because of the way the land falls off. So if I refurb this dam I need to find some good dirt, if I push the dam back I'm gonna need to find a lot of good dirt, and 3/4 of the pond would be dam, dam dilma is what I got.

Ok lets drain the pond, we'll worry about that later.
I'll be back after I find some pipe to drain this sucker.

Thanks for your interest guys!

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Somewhere around the middle of June I cleared off the top of the dam and got a road across it. Then I dug a hole to clear out a spot to set a syphon pipe in. This hole will become key to the project, as you will soon see. I sit back and watched the water drop for the next few days, which was kinda of exciting to me. As much as I enjoy a nice pond of water, I have always been curious of what lies beneath.

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Last edited by mikepjr; 09/29/19 01:30 PM.
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The siphon has run its coarse and removed a lot of water, but didn't get it all. It done what I wanted though, there isn't as much water to deal with and I won't have water blasting out the back of the dam when I cut through washing dirt away and causing erosion down the hill.

Time to cut her open. At this point I still don't know where I'm going with this hole, but I'm sure the dam is getting a redo. I decided to make a cut big enough to get my digger through so I could really reach out and get this thing drained, also thought it would make a good way to get in and out of the pond for whatever reason.

This isn't the first pond I have been in so in the back of my head I figured this dam is saturated and this trek through it could get sloppy, and it was and it did. I made it though, sunk down quite a bit, more so on one side than the other making for a better experience. I reached out in the pond felt around a bit, yep situation normal pond deeper than ditch. Been there, trash pump in my future. I still had a bit of mud dam left, so scooped some muck out behind it and busted her open. I hightailed it out of there beat the water to the back of the dam, as I turned out I received a free undercarriage wash. Perfect!



My Digger


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Last edited by mikepjr; 09/30/19 09:13 PM.
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Looks like fun. Almost makes me wish I had another one to clean out. No, not really... eek

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mikepjr Offline OP
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June 27
Five days since the cut. We are well into hay season, so I only work on the pond when I'm waiting for hay to dry or in the evenings. To this point I have now been back through the cut and cleaned out the mud that washed into it. I also cleaned out a spot to stick the trash pump hose into, and pumped out the remaining water. The wide cut made for great access to haul the pump on the 4wheeler right to where I needed it. I decided not to dig the cut any further down, because how often could it possibly rain. It is almost july after all. LOL!

Now it's time to start getting this hole cleaned out. I made my way around the right side of the pond, which was eroded away on the pond side and a fence on the right. I started into the pond at the dam and as you can see in the pic I started placing the dryer muck around the edge of the hole that I had dug to set the syphon pipe in, purposely to build up some sideboards. You can also see on the left side of the dam where I previously placed a muck pile to dry and soon become a second pit.


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Last edited by mikepjr; 10/04/19 08:56 PM.
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June 29

After a evening hanging out near vertical tipping back and forth on the face of the dam my back had enough, so I cut the top of the dam down and made a ramp to use as a more stable platform to transfer muck. This also gave me more height on the pit which made for a much more efficient use of time. I also now have a better view of the scenery besides mud-air. I do like to look around it gets real boring real quick scoping mud.

There is a benefit to doing this right after it was drained, the muck is still really juicy and it flows down the hill a lot easier. Behind the digger you can see how it's already piling up. There is also one advantage to using a smaller excavator and only one that I can think of, (I would have used a bigger one if I had one) the smaller bucket takes smaller bites of the more dense mud witch brakes it up in smaller pieces and mix that with the really wet muck and handling it twice really helps in getting it thinned out so it can flow down hill. As everyone knows the more you can get mud spread out the quicker it will dry.

I don't remember how deep the pit was but it held a good amount of mud.


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Now that I have hung out here at PB for the last few years and watched my pond/dirt guy renovate my pond, I would like to play in the dirt myself and make a pond...or maybe just renovate/enlarge the small catch basin pond up the hill on my the property.

I had the opposite view of the juicy muck. Mine was aged for many months in the pond with a broken dam and moved more like slow lava. At one point, the operator did not realize it was flowing further down the back side of the dam and had mostly filled in a catch culvert where my pipeworks takes the pond's over flow under my gravel lot (100 plus feet). Luckily I got home in time to notice ands stop him before it flowed into the pipe and it was mostly dug back out with the mini-ex.

I was not happy because it meant more physical labor for me straightening all the stacked rock back out after the mini-ex did it's work/distruction.


Fish on!,
Noel
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QA I got a tractor and the fuel just not much time. If you get bored come on over. LOL


The people who say I can't do it can just sit the @^#% down and watch me. Friends call me Rusto I also subscribe to pond boss mag. http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=504716#Post504716
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Am I responsible for damages (to the tractor or pond)? I didn't say I was experienced!

Still, I wished you lived next door... We could tear some stuff up!


Fish on!,
Noel
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What could you possibly tear up its dirt your suppose to tear it up. And the tractor is a kubota with just over 200 hours I bought brand new. If it breaks it's not the tractor I think it is #teamkubota lol. My neighbor has a blank slate perfect 4 a pond. 5 acres sloping away from the house with good ol kansas clay bout 3 feet down.


The people who say I can't do it can just sit the @^#% down and watch me. Friends call me Rusto I also subscribe to pond boss mag. http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=504716#Post504716
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mikepjr Offline OP
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Originally Posted By: Quarter Acre


I had the opposite view of the juicy muck.


LOL! I can see how that could be a problem. Everyone has different situations, but what the heck to do with the muck is always a problem.

A friend of mine had a pond cleanout job where the muck had to be hauled off site and one of the dump trucks that came in didn't have the tailgate latched good, the guy made it onto a blacktop road before it finally released its gooey contents. My friend had to haul a skid loader over to shove it off the road. he said it was like driving on ice, he was sliding all over the road. He also said the local authorities weren't impressed.

Building a pond or renovating one is a great experience, I say go for it. It's very satisfying when its done, even if it's a small one. But there is a point in size where it starts off playing in the dirt and soon becomes a job. I cleaned out a small pond with a skid loader a long time ago. We were having a drought, I didn't cut the dam, I just scooped it out. Super hurry deal trying to beat the first rains, it was brutal. You guys cleaning out ponds with tractors are nuts! LOL

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Have have been redoing my pond. I started a thread bout it called pond redo. I would post the link but I dont know how to do that yet. It has been it crazy to look back at older pics of it. It kinda sucks just looking at 2d pictures.

Last edited by RStringer; 10/10/19 08:01 PM.

The people who say I can't do it can just sit the @^#% down and watch me. Friends call me Rusto I also subscribe to pond boss mag. http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=504716#Post504716
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My motto is..."I'll fix it or break it beyond fixing"...you've got a 50/50 chance.

My family and friends think I'm pretty handy, but when they challenge me with doing something I've not done before; on a cheap budget I should add...I get the motto out first thing.


Fish on!,
Noel
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Cleaning muck out of ponds is tricky because getting it away from the working area is the biggest issue. We use a trackhoe, a couple of tractors and scrapers, and sometimes a dump truck. This is the most efficient. Although we are lucky enough to have most of the equipment ourselves.

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I would want no part of cleaning out muck. I would think a huge bucket on a backhoe would be ideal. Myself have just been moving topsoil n clay. A end dump truck would be handy. I might be calling it the wrong thing. One that is soild steel and u-shaped. Normally they are shaped lower end at cab I believe. So you keep the muck from running out the back.


The people who say I can't do it can just sit the @^#% down and watch me. Friends call me Rusto I also subscribe to pond boss mag. http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=504716#Post504716
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Mike you got any updates on your progress?


The people who say I can't do it can just sit the @^#% down and watch me. Friends call me Rusto I also subscribe to pond boss mag. http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=504716#Post504716

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