I am currently in the early stages of building a 2 acre pond in Livingston County, MO. I grew up on a farm and witnessed the building of a couple ponds and loved it. Now I am building one for my family just beyond our backyard. I will be doing all the work myself. I have access to the equipment to do it and plan to post additional videos of the progress. Ponds are awesome. Drones are awesome. Large equipment is awesome. It doesn't get much better than a combination of the 3 if you ask me! I have learned so much from this site and thought I would share in my process in hopes that it will help others that are potentially tackling the same project or just want to see some cool drone footage. The pond should push 2 acres and be near 20 feet deep. I have plans to put an island in an area where there is a natural hump. My largest concern is limestone rock. We hit some pretty big individual rocks (1 ton+) while putting in our geothermal system in the construction of our house (this area is just south and east of the pond location). As you can see from the video (4:40 mark or so), there are tons of ponds nearby. Let me know what you think and any tips would be welcomed. I will try to post more soon (I'm a school teacher and it gets dark pretty quick this time of year so we will see how it goes). Most of the trees were dead or dying elms and black/honey locust. I had the time before the equipment was available, so I decided to cut the trees out for firewood, etc. I am hoping to send some of the black locust to the sawmill for lumber to build the dock. Again, we will see how this develops.
Here's the video link. If you computer can handle it, crank up the quality and enjoy.
Here are the stocking rates that I used for my pond. Again, it is just under 2 acres and about 19 feet deep.
October 2018 - 20lbs. of FHM and 1000 Northern Crayfish March 2019 - 100 RES (2-3") and 20lbs. of Golden Shiners (3") May 2019 - 30lbs. of FHM October 2019 - 100 SMB (4-5"), 200 YP (3-4"), and 50 WE (4-5")
If I had it to do over again, I would wait another 6 months to a year to put in my predator fish and let my forage base absolutely explode and would bet that I'd be ahead by this point in the game as far as growth is concerned. My forage base grew incredibly, but man did those fish put a hurting on them. I stopped trapping FHM in about a year. To this day there is still a great population of GSH of all sizes as well as crawdads, but they have certainly been working on them as I will cover later. I certainly believe it is true that you can never have enough food in your pond for your predators!
Here are a few pictures of my fish and some of the giant crawdads the pond was producing. I've also included a link to the crawdads desperately trying to grab some of the floating fish food as the wind pushes it by. It's always entertaining to watch them.
It's hard to believe that is has been nearly 3 years since I last shared about my pond project. It's unbelievable how fast time has gone! I will have a little time over the next couple weeks to catch up on all that has happened with my body of water. It's certainly been a fun couple years to watch my pond and continue to progress it the best that time and resources have allowed. It looks like my last posts pertained to my aeration project in July of 2019 so that's where I plan to pick back up. One of my main goals from this thread is to provide as much of a comprehensive log of my journey as possible all in one location so that others can pull ideas of what to do (and certainly what not to do) when they have a question about their pond build and management. I know I have spent hours and hours reading through threads on this forum and have benefitted greatly from the experience of its users.
Here is a link to the thread that was started on aerating my body of water. Pond Aeration
I ended up making my own "weighted" line using landscape irrigation pipe and 4" corrugated pipe. I cut the 4" corrugated pipe into 2.5" sections and drilled a hole through each one so it could be threaded on to the irrigation pipe and filled with concrete to sink it. I spaced the corrugated pipe sections about 6' apart and that seemed to work just about right. The line wasn't too heavy to handle on the bank and yet it sunk fine. I didn't get pictures of this on my pond, but put in another system for a friend and got pictures of it. We measured how long our runs needed to be and cut and stretched the air lines out on the dam. We then threaded all the "pucks" onto the line and mixed and poured the concrete in each puck. We let them sit over night and moved them the next morning. Overall, it took 100' of corrugated pipe, a few hours to cut it into sections and drill the holes, and a couple hours to thread them onto the lines and pour the concrete. I then used 5 gallon buckets to mount my diffusers on. We poured about 15 pounds of concrete in the bottom of each bucket and the diffusers I bought fit snugly onto the top of the bucket with the bucket handle lifted straight up. On my buddies system we did everything from start to finish in a day and a half and he has 6 diffusers, over 1000' of pipe, 250 pucks, and 15 bags of Quickcrete. We just had to make sure that we ran the pipes out on the dam in the correct order so that when we swung them out into the water we didn't have to drag lines over one another and risk them becoming entangled. I would set the bucket with diffuser on it on the deck of my boat and use my trolling motor to pull them out into position. Another person stayed on the bank and fed the line into the water. You do have to be careful not to kink the line as you swing it in. We did that a time or two but were easily able to straighten it back out; that irrigation line is tough. Once in position, I would tie a small string to the bucket handle and drop it down to the bottom and then tie a 4" section of pool noodle to the string as a float right above the aerator. I did this thinking that it would make it easy for me to grab and just pull the whole system up for maintenance or cleaning, but I have never once had to do that on my BOY in the almost 3 years that system has been running and I don't notice any decrease in air flow. We used irrigation valve control boxes for our valves and I made a homemade box for my pump to set outside my shed that was about 200' away. The box is pretty redneck looking, but it keeps the system pretty quiet and out of sight. The entire system cost less than $1,500 for all materials and works great. There are a couple pictures attached that show what it looks like set up on the dam and ready to go into the water.
I have had no problems with the system and I'm on season 3 with it. I've never even touched the ball valves since they were adjusted on the first day. One picture shows the impact that the aerators have on turned the water over. When it rains lightly, the areas that each diffuses impacts show up really well; it's pretty cool to see.
I typically run my system from Aprilish to Novemberish and remove my pump at the end of each season. Overall, I'm really happy with my system and know that it has been a great addition to my pond.
I almost forgot about another project that took place the summer of 2020. Since the entire planet was shut down due to COVID, we had plenty of time on our hands to build a treehouse on the east edge of the pond. We had enough old lumber to build the stairs and platform and were able to repurpose more of the black locust logs that we cut out to build the pond. Our options were limited for trees to put it in, but we made due. We really didn't have a true plan in place when we started, it just kept evolving as we went. It was a ton of fun to work on this project with my girls and not have a laundry list of other things that needed accomplished right at that minute. We ended up with a small, but pretty cool space to hang out when we finished. Another advantage of living right next to our pond was that we were able to easily run electricity to it ourselves and even have internet out there.
One feature that was a suprise to my kids was a zipline that we added. Growing up, I always thought they were really cool and, with a little research, we were able to create one that ran from the top deck of the treehouse to the pond dam. It starts about 20 feet high and runs a little over 400'. I was right, they are cool, because I enjoy a trip down it as well!
We still had no luck catching a WE in the 2 years they had been in the pond. I contacted our local conservation department and they were excited to come out and shock the pond to see what we could find. Nearly every body of water they handle is standard largemouth, crappie, bluegill, and catfish in this area. They came out in late October and we spent about an hour working around the pond. We were able to sample several YP, SMB, GSH, and RES but still had no luck finding a WE. I had hoped with the cooler water temperatures we would find one shallow enough to bring to the surface. At this point in the game, I was growing a little concerned about the status of my WE and whether or not they were still surviving in my BOY. I thought that maybe the otters had focussed on them that short period they were in the pond or that maybe other conditions were unfavorable for them and they had not surrvided. It certainly wasn't for lack of trying to catch them; we had used about every method that has been successful for us on other bodies of water with no luck. This includes nightcrawlers, FHM, GSH under a bobber, and artificial lures of about every kind. We did find that the SMB and YP sure love most of the above. No joke, we caught several 9-10" YP on 4+ inch GSH. I couldn't believe it. I have also attached a picture of a crawdad dangling from a chunk of nightcrawler that I tipped a plastic grub with. I have caught three crawdads just slow dragging lures on the bottom searching for a WE. Hard to believe we can literally catch mud bugs with a rod and reel and not WE. I would gladly take any advice on catching WE in small impoundments like mine!
Results of shocking produced several 13-15" SMB and 9-10" YP. I was happy with that growth considering these fish were only 2.7 years old at that time. It was so much fun to be a part of this whole process! Again, the science nerd in me was fascinated by the process and the critters involved.
I've also attached a few pictures from our ice fishing endeavors last winter. The last two years we have caught several GSH while ice fishing. They are BIG, but I wish they would just be a meal instead of trying to make a meal of our lures.
From the summer of 2021 throughout the winter, the pond water has been very cloudy. Visibility has been below a foot for a long time now and is something that I need to address and will look for some guidance on. It's one of the variables that I can see being frustrating to control that can have a pretty negative affect on the growth of my sight predators. I will address it in a later post once I'm all caught up to the current date.
During the spring/summer of 2020, my predator fish seemed to be off to a great start. I still had a few FHM swimming about and had some GSH that were 7"+ already. I was really excited for my main forage to be large enough that they would reproduce freely without being eaten by any of my young predator species. I've heard and read that GSH are the most fertile at 3-4" and not so much when they reach 7-8" because their eggs contain a lot of fat, but they still have to be contributing a fair amount. We saw a few RES that were pushing the 8" mark already which we were pretty surpised by. The YP and SMB were growing rapidly from just a few months ago. I knew they had plenty to eat at this point in the game, but it was shocking how quickly they were growing. We also had quite a population of bullfrogs which we began to harvest that summer. I really didn't have a predator in the pond to keep their numbers down and they were chowing down on my crawdads so I unleashed my secret weapon them-----my 8 year old redhead!
Attached are some pictures of those species that summer and an estimate of my fish growth.
Summer 2020 fish sizes.....
SMB - 8"+ at just over a year old YP - 6"+ at just over a year old RES - 7-8" at two years old with plenty of evidence of recruitment WE - 7-8" at just over a year old GSH - 7" at two years old
Here is a link to a video of my SMB chasing GSH as they feed. We have really been entertained by our fish feeding. I wonder what it would be like to be a GSH in my pond. Out comes the feed and you just can't resist coming to the surface to grab a bite, but as soon as you do, you become lunch!
Also, the aerators really attract the baitfish as well. The SMB are constantly breaking the surface around them chasing food.
Life has been really busy and we haven't been able to spend as much time as we would like fishing or managing the pond this year. We had a cool spring and extremely windy weather this spring that kept us inside when we did have a little time. The pond is still very cloudy (around 8" of visibility). I turned on the aerators in early May this year because the water temperatures were so cool up to that point and the water was already full of color so I don't think it is an issue related to this system. I have done a jar test and the water seems to clear up only slightly after several days of sitting. I have mixed in gypsum in a couple other jars in varying amounts and it hasn't seemed to help much if any at all. I'm thinking my issues are organic in nature and really want to come up with a plan soon. I know that the low visibility in the water has to negatively affecting my sight predators.
For the first time we caught what we are sure is a second generation YP this spring. I have attached a picture of the 5" little guy; to me there is no way this fish was an original. Our YP have just turned 3 years old and from what I understand when they get to 3-4" they are capable of spawning. If that is correct, we should have seen YP reproduction for the last two springs. I feel like there is a plenty of structure for them. We have had two 30' cedar trees and late this winter I added several tops of hedge trees. There is an area in my pond that is probably 60' x 30' that is full of brush from the bottom to the top. I would think that would provide a decent area for them to deposit their ribbons. Time will tell. Would my large GSH be raiding eggs and eating tiny YP fry?
We saw our first dead SMB. This is the only record we have of one of the original 100 dying. I've attached a picture. It turns out that his eyes were larger than his mouth as he chocked on a 4" RES. That's more proof that they don't go well with spiny backed fish.
I have also attached a few pictures of our spreadsheet with our data on it. We have a spreadsheet with all fish on it and then tabs for individual sheets for each species of fish. So far we have used about 140 tags. Of our original 100 SMB, we have tagged almost 90 of them! We have noticed a couple that we have caught who have lost their tags, but for the most part they seem to be staying in pretty well. Smallie #1279 has a propensity for eating artificial lures and has been caught four times since he has been tagged. I have color coded my spreadsheet tag number to keep track. Fish caught a second time are in blue, a third time in green, and a fourth time in orange.
I was late to have the conservation department come out and shock the pond this spring. Last fall we had a plan to have them come out early this spring to try and find a few WE. That just didn't happen. They were finally able to come out May 10th this year. We were in the middle of a four day stretch of 90+ degree weather and didn't have high hopes for finding a WE. We shocked for about 30 minutes and found lots of healthy GSH, SMB, RES, and YP. It was fun to see how many of them were already tagged. As we continued, we pulled up to one of the SMB beds in the northeast corner of the pond and in about 3' of water up rolled a WE! I was beyond ecstatic and so were the guys from the department. We quickly put her in the tank and continued on for a few more minutes. When we were finished we tossed all the other fish back and measured and tagged the WE. I knew she was a good fish when she boiled up but had no idea how good she actually was. Honestly, I expected a WE to be 14-16" or so at this point or even smaller since we have had no luck catching one. Check out the picture. This fish just turned 3 years old and was 21.5" and 3 lbs. 12 oz.!!!! I couldn't believe it. She was incredibly healthy and growing at a better rate than any other species in the pond. It certainly made my day and gave me reason to believe that the other WE in there were doing well too. I would have to think that this fish is in the top 10% of my WE that have survived, but it just makes us want to catch a couple even more just to see.
I have 30 lbs. of GSH headed to my pond in a few days to continue to supplement my forage base. I plan to add a few pounds to my forage pond and try to get them going well in there. Now if I can just fix my cloudy water, I would feel great about where my pond is headed.
