Day one of our pond building experience is now complete. It is very cold, icy, and snowy here in central Missouri. We have 58 acres 1/2 timber and 1/2 open ground. We are using the old cattle pond which is spring fed to feed into the larger pond. We will keep the majority of the dam to be used as a peninsula to walk out and fish from both sides. Eventually we will build a house over looking the pond. I am 39 and my two boys are 11 and 13. We are all very active in the outdoors. This is our dream and I'm glad that I have PB to share the experience with. The pond should be at least 2.5 acres with a depth of 14-16ft.

The boys are cold.....but very excited.

That is awsome! Keep the pictures coming. Whats your plans for stocking?

I am a bass guy. I fish 40-45 tournaments a year. I also have a JH/HS Fishing Team. So I definitely want to use it as a training ground for my school kids. I am a school Supt. so I am fortunate to be surrounded by great kids and I want to give back to them. Largemouth Bass, Blue Gill, and Red Ears for now. Not sure what else. I want to grow large bass but I also want to have plenty for the kids to keep busy. This is my first "real" pond.

Exciting times for sure!

Great stuff. I bet the boys are very excited. My boys were crazy the year we built the pond.

Wish we had two ponds like your self. First pond would be the feeder fish pond that would run off into the next pond. Huge numbers of very large fish can be had that way for sure.

Have you got some house plans yet?

This is ours over our pond 1800 square feet with fully finished basement with 9 foot ceiling height.

We moved in Dec 3rd and waking up to the view of the pond doesn't get old. She is snow covered but I can see if the aerator is doing her job.

Cheers Don.

Thanks for sharing Don. We have been looking over plans for quite sometime now. Fortunately its only 4 miles from town, where we live and work. It's easy to make quick trips out there. I have a finished cabin out there that the boys and I camp in. Its ran off of a generator for now. Makes for great deer and turkey camp in between the many sports that they are involved with.
Attached are a few pics of my boys from this past spring of turkey season (first 30 minutes), and a pic of my oldest shooting a nice but smaller buck on the last day of season. He passed up several good ones. We really live in gods country.

#sorry pics are sideways and I don't know how to fix it lol

What a deer!

Living the dream how cool is that?

Tracy

We completed Day 4 of the project on Sunday. It's coming along very nice. Pictures really don't do it justice. With adding more dam material it is going to be at least 15' deep. I am very pleased with that depth. They are planning on finishing up today but the transmission went out of one of their dozers yesterday. Glad I don't have to pay for that!

Enjoy the pics!

Looking real nice. How big do you think it has become? The soil appears to be good clay?

Are you going to get structure and habitat in there before it fills? Might make a neat learning experience for those kids you talked about. Should get them to propose plans and ideas, possibly make a contest? At the very least an excellent learning opportunity to be shared.

Keep up the great work.

It should be approximately 2.5 acres, based on GIS Mapping. It is nearly 500' long. It has very good clay and very few rocks. Which amazed us because our area is known to be rocky.

I am a little bit of a control freak lol. I have a plan for the structure and it will be placed soon. The kids will all be helping me with the labor. We have even bused out our HS Ag and Science classes so they can see the before and after. The Science teacher is going to be using it as a place for some of their studies and experiments. (water testing, bugs, plant growth, water life, etc.)

Should be fun for everyone!

Looks great. Wheres all the snow? We can drive the snowmobiles over the fences still here and 6"s of good solid ice on the pond.

Ho hum. Lucky you.

It was 70 on Saturday and 65 on Sunday. Great weather but back to mid 30's today. Should be dry for a while so that will give me time to put some structure in and my dock.

Monday was day 5 of the project. A lot of progress is being made. They may be able to finish it up today. The depth is now 18' on the deep end. It took more dam material than expected. The end near forage pond will be shallower with several dirt piles and ridges. Can't wait to start placing the structure.

It's looking very nice. Congrats.

Tuesday was day 6 of the project. It is really shaping up. The deepest part is 17-18' with the shallower end being near by forage pond. We have left some ledges in the contour. They plan to build some dirt/clay mounds with left overs today. It will for sure be done today. As you can see in the pictures he had a dozer go down on Sunday. It has set in the same spot since. It will be fixed today, they thought it was the transmission but fortunately for them it was a simpler fix. But nothing is cheap on those rigs.
Enjoy the pics.

Nice work !!!

I didn't get any pictures last night because it was right at dark but "Lake Money Pit" is now complete! Actually it is much better than I ever imagined. It also came in $2,000 less than the original bid. It is -5 windchill today but I plan to get some pictures this evening.

Finished under budget is good news ! Pics would be good.

We tried to put in a little structure before the snow came in. We did get a little bit done. I had a buddy bring his bobcat over to change up some piles in the bottom. We now have 6" of snow in the bottom so our plans will be slowed down for now. I am happy to say my spring is flowing and I have as much as a foot of water in the bottom of the pond in places.

more pics!

It is so hard to put size or depth into perspective in pictures without much reference, but the brick pile picture and the pallet one really show how nice the size of that pond will really be.

Great job and congratulations. You will enjoy it.

Your old pond will give much enjoyment also, especially where it is so close to the big one.

We have a 3 acre pond we built, but also a 1 acre pond that I refurbish from a really old half acre cattle pond which is less than an eighth mile away across a little creek. An interesting observation, sometimes if the fish are not biting well in one pond, I go to the other and they will. It is a weird thing. Really handy having two ponds that way.

The other nice thing is, your old BOW already has fish and you have a chance to do some fishing in it while waiting for the new pond to come of age while working on and stocking it.

Sorry for not having much of an explanation. Some of it is in the previous comments.
The pond is between 2.5 and 3 acres. The deep dam end is 17.5'. The end near the little pond is closer to 10-12'. The little pond is spring fed. It was lowered 3' during construction and within 4 days it was full again. Clay compaction was great, plenty of it to work with. I had several piles and ledges built into the bottom. I also added a line for a cattle water tank if needed in the future. We are also adding a gravel ramp. I have a lot of work to do before it starts filling up with water.

No updates for a while. I have a 10" titanium rod in my arm from breaking it 5 years ago. With all of the heavy lifting adding structure I had my lower pin pull out. Therefore I had surgery yesterday morning to remove the pin. So it has slowed me down a bit. Here is what my arm looked like before surgery.

Now to the important stuff. I had a load of very large rock to start placing in the pond. I have 4 loads coming so far. I was able to get it for $75 a load, very pleased with that price. My wife wants to use some of it for landscaping. She can't believe that I want to cover it up with water. lol

Nice rocks ! Hope the arm gets better quick - and don't hurt the arm moving the rocks.

Sorry for only posting pictures of rock but as soon as I heal up and get some equipment these will make some nice structure for the swimmers. The picture shows 3 of the 4 loads that I have had delivered so far. It is freezing cold here in MO. Supposed to be another cold, snowy and freezing rain filled weekend. The pond has over a foot of water in the deepest end at this point. Just from the overflow of the spring. I'm hoping the rains hold off until I can get all of the structure placed.

Ouch!

I drove out to the land yesterday to see how things were looking. Snapped a few pics for you guys. I am very pleased how quickly the spring is running into the new pond. It is now over 2'deep in the deepest end. You can see some of the structure that I placed a few weeks ago. I have a long ways to go. Hopefully within a few weeks I can start back to doing some manual labor at the pond.

We received about 6" of snow. Thought we would enjoy the inside of the pond while we could!

Nice pics. I noticed the pallet pyramid structure and thought I would pass along my experience with the ones I built. I put Christmas trees inside some of mine and weighted them down with a 40 lb bag of cement. That did not work to keep them where I put them. I found two of mine floating one day and had to then add cement blocks tied on them to hold them in or near the bottom. So u might want to add more weight or stake them down where they are before the water rises.
Tracy

Thanks, I do plan to add some concrete blocks to them. I have some big rock and brick in them now but I was planning to add more weight. I was sidelined for a while because of arm surgery. Hope to get released and to start working on it again in a few weeks. Hopefully before much rain.

The pond has over 3' of water in the deep end now. A little bit of it is from a few inches of snow but mainly from the spring. I still have some work to do with my concrete block piles. I was just getting them started when I had to quit because of my injury. Hopefully I can poke around some this weekend. It was down to 5 yesterday and its supposed to be in the 50's and 60's over the next week. Might be a little muddy though.

Just don't over do it and ruin the surgery. Not worth making it a "permanent" injury.

My boys and I hit it pretty hard over the weekend in between trips to basketball games and church. You wouldn't think it would be so time consuming. I am very sore this morning but my arm has held up well. If you look at the picture that shows the little pond in the background you can see my 11 year old's leaning tower of tires. I ran out of room on my phone and couldn't take any more pictures. Most of the pallets have plastic drain tile and tires in them. They may never hold a fish but they do look nice. I have some really big boulder rock to move but I will need some much bigger equipment to do that. I will also start adding some cut down trees and stumps. Any suggestions or advice?

looking good, I will tell u when I did my tire things, I drilled holes in the top side of the tires, so air would escape an the tires would stay in place. But half of my tires still floated when the water came up. I then got in the boat and tried to move the tires back to where I first had them. But, they were heavy and I had little luck moving them back. I had my portable hand drill with me and so I drilled larger holes in the top of the tires and they went straight to the bottom. I was not able to hold them up at the surface. So they now set on bottom in the area they floated to. My point here, is make sure u have drilled some holes the size of a nickel in the very top of your tires. I did drill holes in the beginning but I am guessing they were to small or were located in the wrong spot on the tires.
Tracy

That is good to know. We have drilled holes in all of them but they are definitely not the size of a nickel. May need the boys to go back with a bigger bit. I also have them weighted down with some concrete blocks. Some of the structure are also staked down with rods and fence posts.

More structure. What kind of growth is this in the two pics around the spring in my little pond?

I think it is FA, sorry but I have enough trouble pronouncing it much less spelling it
Tracy

Yup that's it

Is there a good way to get rid of some of the FA? Its not all over my little pond but I don't want it transferring into the big pond either.

In my little pond, I skim the floating stuff off with a dip net. If the conditions are right, you won't need to worry about transfer to your big pond, it will come all by itself anyway!

We plan to put our house in the area of the walnut tree. The pond is over 450' long, not sure how wide. I really enjoyed the 60+ degree day that we had yesterday. Went out after work yesterday and basically just walked around the pond and day dreamed. It's only 4 miles from my current home. So it is real convenient.

Just found this thread. Very nice looking pond!
I've been going through some of the same situations with building a pond.
Mine is on a smaller scale, and no spring to fill it. I'm waiting on rain, and it's pretty dry in NE Missouri. Plus I didn't come in "under" budget! Ha.
Looks nice. I wish I could have done it when my kids were younger, but it wasn't in the budget back then.
I'm trying to lure the grand kids out now.
Jeff

Thanks SetterGuy! This project as along with our 58 acres has been a family decision all of the way through. My wife and I both have pretty good jobs for our area but our pockets are not very deep. We so badly want our kids to have an opportunity that we didn't have so we have made sacrifices to make it happen. In fact I sold my new crew cab truck and purchased a very nice 2004 truck with only 71,000 miles on it just to get away from another vehicle payment. My priorities have really changed in the last few years. Our two boys love being at the "ranch" lol. They are really liking "Money Pit Lake"! Neither of them can wait for the water to fill. I am starting the beginning stages of our 12'x 20' stationary dock this weekend. There will be no walkway. The end of the dock will be in at least 10' of water so the boys should have no problem jumping off of it when at full pool. There is always something to do! Your grand kids will love it too!

We started building our permanent dock. Decided to go 12'x 16' with a 6' walkway. Was going to do it 20' out to get more depth but couldn't get any materials longer than 16'. So we decided to go ahead and do a walkway as well. The depth of water at the end of the dock should be 9-10' of water. Which I think is deep enough for the kids to jump off of. I was very lucky to have my pond builder to come over and drill the 10 holes for us. He is a great guy! Should look different by next weekend.

Great start. Looks like it will be a very functional dock. You will get lots of use from it.

Nice!! Building a pond sure is fun isn't it? It's good you're taking lots of pictures. As our pond filled, we marked its progress w/pink flamingos. It was funny to look at all the wildlife tracks that came up to them to check them out. We poured concrete pillars for a dock before the pond filled up but still haven't gotten around to building it yet, and it doesn't look like it will be for awhile. That's no so bad as it always gives us something else to look forward to.

I was able to get my dad and a friend of his to get the posts set before the rain hits that they are predicting. I couldn't get away from work. My dad is an old contractor and has built many of houses in his day. I hired his friend to help him with some of the heavy lifting and more of the tedious things. I think it is looking really good. We used 5 x 5 posts with 2 - 2x8's for the beams. We have 10 posts and 3 beams. The joists will be on 16" centers. I will be using 2x6's for the flooring. Of course everything is treated. I think it will serve our needs, just hope it lasts a while.

Worked on the dock a few more hours this weekend. All I have left is the walkway. It is 12x16. I used 5x5 treated posts. 2x8 treated for the joists and 2x6 treated for the decking. It has 10 posts and 3 beams supporting it. It is very solid. Looking forward to many evenings sitting on it.

Nice dock. It should provide many years of enjoyment. A pond or lake without a dock misses lots of human satisfaction and enjoyment.

Looks great!

Thank you for the positive comments. We are very excited. Can't wait for the spring rains.

Nice job

You're gonna love that dock, and all the memories made there. Well done and congrats!

Great job!

Soooo much easier building them before the pond fills with water.

all you need is a little water

Nice pond and great dock! Can't wait to see the house.

We have really been working hard lately. Still need to put up my rope railing around the dock walkway. I have been digging holes and concreting in hedge posts and tree tops to add some vertical structure. The recent rains have been really nice. I am still acting like a kid in a candy store. Youth Turkey Season starts this weekend so we hope to have some pictures for you next week! Have a great weekend.

ToddM, it will be a few years on the house. Wished it could be sooner. I keep telling everyone that I had my priorities straight....Pond Before The House!

We had our little pond treated with rotenone earlier in the week. I was shocked to see about 6 bass in the 2lb range, many green sunfish, blue gill and some big shiners. We wanted to make sure that we are starting from scratch. Sprayed the new pond too just to make sure we didn't have any run off into it. My two boys and I hated to see it happen but I guess it had to happen. Hate to see them go to waste. If we had known that there were so many pan sized fish we would have tried to catch them to eat during one of our camping trips!

Looks great bowfishersmith.

Make sure your tire structure has numerous holes drilled in all the tires so air and later pond gasses can escape and/or are tied down very well. I would drill at least some holes even if the tires are tied down.

I drilled holes and weighted the tires with rocks inside and still had one that floated to shore and had to re-sink.

A person wants all the voids to be filled with water, not pond gasses, so the fish and pond critters can utilize the space.

One addition to our pond I like was adding some permanent moorings for our small boat. We get lots of wind, so our pontoon paddle boat would blow around a lot when we fished from it. Tried a couple different anchors but they would hang up on my different tree stumps, concrete cribs and tree limb fish structures. Finally went scuba diving and tied off a number of mooring ropes with small floats attached to my large concrete structures. The small floats are unobtrusive yet mark some of the structures for fishing reference from the bank and now we can easily boat up to them and tie off the boat. Based on the wind direction and letting out different lengths of rope, we can position the boat on about any part of the pond we want to fish. Earth anchors in the pond bottom would work also. Just a thought.

snrub, we have drilled several holes already in the tires, hopefully enough. The anchors sound like a cool idea. In between fishing tournaments this weekend I made a trip to the pond and was surprised to see a few 2lb catfish floating from the rotinone. I had no idea that they were in there. They may have been bull heads. Hopefully we will be able to start stocking by the end of next week.

We had a busy weekend at the pond. Planted some apple, pear and peach trees. The deer are going to love us. Picked up some corn seed for planting some food plots. We also took the plunge and bought a new tractor. I picked up a 4x4 Massey Ferguson 1739E with Hydro and a skid steer quick attach loader. I also bought a Rhino 72" rotary mower and a Rhino 66" tiller. It will be nice to be able to use my own equipment and not try to beg and borrow all of the time. Hopefully I will like it fine. They seem to be well liked. Fathead minnow, blue gill and sunfish are coming next week. Will add more pics when I can.

Our water came up 3-4' over the weekend. We are hoping for a few more good rains in the near future. Things are changing quickly. We will be putting in fish this week.

625 3-4" Bluegill Sunfish
250 4-6" Bluegill Sunfish
1875 Fathead Minnows
200 3-4" Redear Sunfish

We plan to wait till next spring to put in our LMB.

We bit the bullet and finally purchased a tractor. This is the first tractor that I have ever owned. It is a 1739 4x4 Massey Ferguson with a quick attach front loader. We also bought a 72" rhino rotary mower and a 65" rhino rotary tiller. I plan to use the tiller for my food plots. My wife was learning how to drive it, pretty easy being a hydrostat. Slowly making our dream a reality. Just wished the house was coming sooner than later.

Nice tractor. That's a great investment I think you'll be happy with.

The fish are being delivered today at noon. Can't wait!

Such a momentous occasion! Congrats. Cmm

Better grab some pics!

Our fish showed up on time. Everything looked pretty healthy. With the help of my wife and boys and a gentleman from the local hatchery we started our life cycle of our pond. Blue Gill, Red Ear Sunfish and Fathead Minnows. It was great to see some fish in our water. Immediately we had some snapping turtles come in to feed. They were pretty aggressive.

Congrats!!! Fun stuff...

More rain equals more water in the pond. I have bags of corn, soybeans, milo and sunflower seed that I can't get planted because of all of the rain. But I like seeing the pond level climbing. The new fish love hanging around the structure that I planted. I placed a few large 14-16' cedars 1/2 in the water yesterday, no pics of them yet. We also placed our gravel for our little boat ramp yesterday as well. Things are really starting to happen quick now. Looks like next week I can plant my food plots. Corn will be a little late this year but I doubt the deer will mind.

Congrats. So this is where it all begins. Looks like you've done a good job prepping for the forage.

Looks great man!

BFS I had 6.5 inches in 20 hours, bet you'd of liked to have that! Me not so much, I want the pond on the land, not in my basement! Looks great!!!

Just read through this thread! Amazing pond! How many bass are you going to stock?

I will be stocking 125 3"-5" and 50 7"-9" bass. We have decided to go ahead and stock them this fall. It is raining again today. I took off of work to plant my food plots so of course it rained. lol, But at least it is not in my basement Drahts.

The water is filling up the pond nicely. I haven't had time to brush hog the pasture around the pond so please ignore the tall grass. The dock is 16' wide so it gives you an idea about how long the pond is. I think we are about 4' from being full pool. I was also able to get some food plots in this past week in between rains. Little late on the corn but if it produces just a little the deer will like it anyways. My oldest son Rider (14) helped me drag some of the plots that we broadcasted. He was a good helper.

Looks great!

Great stuff. Love the pictures!

Going with 200 total LMB is common in your area, but IIRC, you only stocked like 625 BG? Sure wouldn't hurt those LMB's appetite if you added another 500- 6" BG 3:1 ratio of bg to lmb is pretty light.

We put in almost 900 blue gill and 200 red ear. They were placed before they spawned too. I can always get more but I thought that was similar to what I have been reading on here. We have between 2.5-3 acres at full pool, which is very close.

Looks great man. Cool to have a Pond Boss neighbor now. Looks like you have crossed the T's and dotted the I's. Congrats

Great looking place, pond, ponds.. I'm noticing more Missouri guys on here all the time. A lot of this rain has missed the NE part of the state. I've been waiting since last fall for my pond to fill. However, starting Fri, there's a 50% chance of rain for six days. Hopefully we will get some.
Your place looks great. I wish I would have got ours before my sons had grown up and were on their own. Yours will have lifetime memories made there for sure. I'm working at luring in grand kids now. Ha

Thanks everyone! We are very excited about it and glad that we can share our place with our kids, family and friends. I couldn't have picked a better spring to build a pond. Started building in February and nearing full pool already. It will be almost 18' at full pool.

It depends on your goals for the pond. If your goals are to grow large Bluegills, then the stocking strategy is good. If your goals are to grow large LMB, then the stocking ratio is more near 30:1 or greater. (bluegills to bass)

Esshup,
I think I sent you a message. If you didn't get it let me know please.

We received 5 inches of rain over the weekend. Our pond really jumped up! Starting to look a lot different. My brushhog/mower comes in this week too, so I can finally start taking care of the grass and weeds a little bit too.

Got it and replied.

We are now at full pool. Water is actually going over the spill way. We have had 7" of rain in the last 4 days. But we have more coming. The dock beams are barely under water, but once the water level stabilizes it should be perfect. Last night we were about 1.5' from being full. Amazing how quickly our pond has filled! But now I'm nervous that it holds! I'm sure it will be just fine.

Congrats man! Looking good!

With all those amazing rock piles you should really consider stocking some crayfish. They would have plenty of structure and should be able to get a sustainable population going, plus they are relatively cheap.
You have done a spectacular job of designing this pond but I fear you are light on forage. If you want big bass you should wait until next year to stock your bass or add a significant number of 6" bluegill and maybe a few hundred golden shiners now. Are you going to establish any vegetation for your young forage?

Thanks guys! We currently have some crayfish that were in the forage pond before we built. I still see their holes in the ground. Could definitely use more though. I am working with MDC on this project since I am so involved with our youth. I am making this available for some youth fishing days throughout the year. Esshup was telling me the same thing about being light on forage. I am trying to address the issue. My goals are #1 quality bass fishing, #2 Good sized blue gill for entertaining the kids. I have put a lot of time and effort into this project so I really want it done right.

Rockville, I do plan on establishing some vegetation as well. Not really sure where to start yet.

Wow, your pond looks great. We've missed most of that rain North and East of you. We've had a couple of inches over the last two days up by Mark Twain, but not enough to fill mine. One of these days!

I am not sure what vegetation would work in your area. I would start by finding out your climate zone and your water PH. Then go to www.aquariumplants.com and find something that will work in your water in your climate. Hybrid water lillies and vallisneria are popular but I have not been able to get either to take hold particularly well. I am going to try some new techniques and see if my luck changes.

Hey Rockville MDA and anybody else interested,

Some of us have a current thread going on selecting and getting vegetation going. If you are so inclined, you are welcome to share/hijack that thread with us so we can learn together and maybe keep some of the info together.

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=415599&page=1

Bill D.

Thanks for the link.

More pictures. Was excited to find a picture of the project on TerraServer. Can you guys tell me what the plant is in my little pond?

Looking great!

IMO the plant looks like one of the arrowhead varieties.

Duck potato?

IMO Could be. Largest of the arrowheads. Hard to tell from the picture. For Duck Potato, the flowers have 3 petals and the flower stalks are taller than the leaves.

It does look like the "arrowhead" variety. I noticed yesterday that something has been eating them at the water surface. I didn't have my phone to take any pictures. Will try to some other time.

Little Fathers Day fun. My wife and the boys played for the first time in the new pond, while I brush hogged some clover plots. We had at least 3' visibility. I was surprised after having 10" of rain in the last week. I have been feeding the blue gill and sunfish the last few days. They are really coming into the feed well. Lots of fun.

Nice work.

Great memories in the making!

Did a little brush hogging and mowing. Still can't believe how clean the water is. It is great for playing and swimming but may be a little clean for fishing 3-4' visibility at the time. I have been hand feeding our blue gill and sunfish every night. I really enjoy watching them feed. We haven't cast a lure at them yet but may start soon.

Very nice

Just read through this thread you did A wonderful job..theirs nothing like watching youngsters around A pond...

Spent the 4th of July weekend hanging around the pond. We had a bunch of family and friends over. The kids really enjoyed swimming, kayaking and rafting. It reassured me that I did the right thing by building the pond. I enjoy seeing everyone having fun. I let the boys fish the morning of July 4th. The BG were chomping and the boys had a ball.

Thank you everyone for all of the kind words.

Teach em to hunt/fish and be outdoors and you won't have to hunt your kids! Awesome, you don't need reassurance, your doing it right! And I'm not talking just your pond! Great seeing FAMILY do things together!!

Hats off to you and your whole family.
Doug

Hats off +1

Everything looks great!

Great job.

wow...love the pano pictures...
grass/pasture looks nice & thick around pond.
beautiful place bowfishersmith

It has been a pretty frustrating few weeks. We had a lot of rain this spring and early summer, which filled up our new pond pretty quick. Once the rain stopped and the water leveled out we have found some pretty severe leaks. I know some of it could be normal but I have at least two spots that are running like a water hose out of the side of the dam. I have food plots that are getting flooded out because of all of the leakage. It has now dropped 10-12" in a weeks time. The contractor is going to do what he can to take care of it, he is a great guy and very reputable in our area. But it just frustrates me! But big deal...life is good! I hate to complain about a water leak.

Mine finally got full also. I'm going up tonight to see how much it's dropped. I hope not much. Please let me know what your contractor says and does. Hope you get it stopped.

I also put my heart and soul into our pond build, I still have nightmares of it being empty from a leak. I hope that you can get the leak resolved quick and cheap. There are,new products out there that I would try before I drained it. Best of luck!

Edit: In looking back over your dam build I see no photos of a core trench and no compacting rollers? Did the contractor core trench the dams? Did you have clay soil? Did you compact?

Edit#2: I do see a compacting roller but still no photos of a core trench.

I really don't know the names of the equipment. I do know that he put in a core trench because I was asking about why the trench was there and he explained to me about its purpose. He is confident that we can take care of the major leaks. He is willing to re-do if necessary. We do not plan on draining at this point. He said this project had more clay than any other project that he has ever been on. Very little rock, but also very little top soil since it was mostly clay, good for pond but not good for top dressing the dam. I am certain he will take care of it. But he is so busy right now that it may be a little while before he can get to it. So for now I just watch it drop lower and lower.

I like the term of putting your heart and soul into it. Don't get me wrong, ponds are a lot of money but the heart and soul is what makes it hurt so much.

Just curious, are the leaks at the base of the dam, or up on the side of the dam?

The reason I ask is, if the leak is at the base the water could be coming under the dam under or through the core trench. If the leak is higher up on the side of the dam, it is more likely that the lifts of soil were too much at a time with inadequate compaction and the water is flowing through the dam horizontally.

A seep I would not be as concerned about as it might heal itself. But something like "running out like a garden hose" does not sound good at all. That much flow can cause erosion and cause the problem to get worse with time rather than better.

At least your contractor is planning on taking care of it, which is a good deal. Always nice when a person backs up his work.

snrub,
One is around my cattle watering pipe. But the other two are near the top 4th of the dam. My contractor even commented that the clay was so good that it may be a compaction issue. So I think you are right. Due to weather coming in they were in a hurry to complete it and now we are paying for it. But I am certain he will take care of it. Just delays the outcome that much longer.

I'm glad your contractor is going to stand behind his work. I didn't have great clay, and I had a lot of rock.. Plus I was the contractor.. My neighbor was on one of the dozers. I depended on him for advice, and paid him well, but it's on me if I have a leak..
Are you still getting rain? We are, up by New London..

We got a little rain on Friday but nothing since. Hopefully we can get a shower or two, at least enough to water my fruit trees.

The cattle watering pipe likely had some sort of anti-seep collar (one or two of them) around the pipe to keep water from following the pipe and causing a leak. It can be tricky getting proper compaction around the collar as it usually has to mostly be done by hand. I know the two we put in around my overflow pipe were a PIA. A water source pipe for a cattle water source would be lower in the dam and subject to higher head pressure so even more critical to get it installed right.

I have heard (I'm no expert, just a farmer with some construction equipment) that the ideal dam material is not pure clay, but the proper mix of both clay and soil. The reason being clay has such high shrink/swell ratio that it can crack if it dries out too much.

When we were building our dam we used a ruber tired scraper for compaction. Not the perfect implement, because the smooth tires can cause the compaction in layers, whereas a sheepsfoot roller has the sheepsfeet to knead and knit the layers of clay together. In our case the dam was designed with a "bench" for bank erosion control that was supposed to be 5' wide. It ended up more like 10' wide and we ended up making it a road along side the water instead of what it was originally designed for (we used crushed rock along the bank for shore line erosion control so the "bench" became redundant). The point I am trying to make is that our dam is at least 5' thicker than the original design parameters and the original design was pretty robust to begin with. We did it ourselves with a 12 yard scraper pulled by a Challenger track tractor and a Cat D6N XL that we own for our farm use. Needless to say, as we learned to build a pond, we hauled a lot more dirt around than I would have ever been able to afford a contractor to do. The dam is robust, so even if we screwed up a little with compaction layers, there was adequate over build to take care of it. It is dry as a bone on the back side.

Any way, wishing you the best on getting it fixed.

Sorry, I haven't posted for a while. Life has been very busy. My forage base has flourished. Fathead minnows, blue gill and red ears have spawned well and have taken over the pond. I also have thousands of tad poles and little frogs, and I'm not exaggerating on the thousands. The BG's and RES are growing well and are a lot of fun to feed. But they won't leave you alone when your swimming, lil peckers! We haven't had much rain so the pond has dropped with our leak but fortunately it has only dropped 2.5-3'. The spring is helping it maintain. My contractor has been out and has a plan to fix the leak. I am confident that he will do so. My bass are coming in October. The place that we are getting them from did not want to hold until spring. I think that will be fine based on our numbers of forage. We had our 4th of July party and a party for the baseball team that I coach at the pond. Plus multiple evening get togethers with friends. We love our place. We are putting our current home on the market soon and hope to be building soon.

On another note, my food plots look amazing and I am getting some great pics of deer, turkey and other critters.

Well we put some of the final touches on our initial stocking plan last week. We received our bass. To my surprise the bass were much larger than anticipated. We ended up with 11"-13" and 5-7" bass. Originally they were supposed to be 7-9" and 4-6".

thats an awesome feeling.....

Those are some nice bass!

After the recent rains the pond is almost full again. We have been feeding the bass, bluegill and sunfish about 4 times a week. Just hand feeding at this point. Been busy working on building plans for a house and a shop. Pretty stressful to say the least. I had no idea how costly things are now. Things have changed since my dad built houses 20 years ago. We plan to put our house just uphill from the walnut tree that is in the pic.

My son finally pulled the trigger on a buck that we put on the hit list. He wasn't as mature as we like but his characteristics were hard to pass. We have over 500 trail cam pics of this buck we called "Split Brow". But we hadn't seen him in person until the 2nd weekend of firearm season. My 14 year old spent many hours bowhunting and passed up several young bucks. I spent a few days in the stand as well but neither one of us had seen "Split Brow". My son and his buddy filmed the entire hunt, dropping "Split Brow" in his tracks. Its a pretty awesome video. He ended up with 13 scoreable points. I'm very proud of my son and his patience in the woods.
My 12 year old shot a young buck during youth season as well. I have the boys participate in taking care of what they harvest and having the benefit of knowing what they are consuming.

That is a very nice buck. Would have been very difficult for me to pass up.
Congrats to your son!

Really nice one.

Very nice work and well done on all accounts !

Thanks for the compliments. I appreciate the feedback!

that's one heck of a kitchen meat grinder

That is a .75HP LEMS Grinder. A friend of mine gave it to me because he had never used it. It works great! I worked at a meat processing plant all of the way through college so I have the experience to do it all. I am getting ready to build a new shop out at our pond and I plan on having a hoist, hot water and proper drains so we can make our processing easier without taking it into the house lol. Might keep the wife happier. Actually she doesn't mind, she does the grocery shopping and knows how expensive beef is anymore.

My 12 and 14 year old went out on their own this weekend with the electronic game caller. They took these two big female bobcats within 10 minutes of each other. More wildlife management practices going on at the farm!

That is so cool. What a great thing for those two to do on their own.
Probably saved 100s of quail in the process.
Ha! Good shootin!

indeed, Beef is getting out of control....Deer is better for you any way,

I do mix about 15-20% chuck roast in when I grind for burgers though.

If I'm doing burgers I like to mix a little fatty beef as well. But for jerky and some other dishes I prefer it as is. I normally grind some of both. We are getting ready to make some brats and summer sausage as well. I will be mixing some pork for the brats.

Great to see the boys becoming stewards of the land! Good teaching pop! Pass it on!

Doug

Sorry, I haven't posted anything for a while. Things have been very busy. I caught a few fish back in March and everything seems to be growing well. My pond is still leaking which makes me sick. Luckily my spring helps maintain it. We are finishing up a 40x60 shop with a front porch and a full bathroom w/shower, and a kitchen sink. It is turning out real nice. I really enjoy feeding my fish and every once in a while I turn the kids loose to catch a few.

This sunset never gets old!

40x60 shop, 12' walls, scissor trusses, 2x6 frame, spray foam insulation, full Bathroom, kitchen sink, 3 12'x11' insulated doors, loft living quarters, with a front porch for some easy nights! It will be great to have a place to store everything instead of hauling it every time.

Well done; beautiful place.

Very nice work - could use some shade around the pond.

Thank you. Yes we do need shade! We plan on building a house soon and we have been waiting to make sure everything is exactly where we want it! I have planted 18 fruit trees though.