I am a new pond owner in northeast NC. This is an established (approx 1990), 10 acre pond that was stocked with a variety of fish (pan fish, bass, catfish). I don't know the current fish condition but the pond is ground water fed and appears clean and fresh. There is plenty of grass in the shallows and visible turtles.

My first priority will be to figure out how to firm up the bottom for a wading access area for the grandkids. I have read some of the info in previous posts about sand, pebbles, gravel etc. But haven't reached a decision on how to proceed yet.

I haven't searched the forums yet but was wondering if rock fish (strippers) caught locally would transport/survive in this pond.

I am hooked on your website already and spending way too much time at the computer. Need to be outside fishing!

(I should have take JHAP's advice and used Google to search for striper info. First off I would have found out that strippers are not good if your married (but striper's are if she like fish) and secondly I would have found over 800 hits).

Hey, PasquotankPond, welcome to Pond Boss! You are looking at something my wife and I were just discussing, literally a few minutes ago! We have a couple of older ponds and the smaller one that we use most right now has a soft bottom in most areas due to silting in a bit over the years. We're planning a beach area this summer and were discussing this very idea. One thing we're likely to do is use an area where, due to current and flow direction (when the pond has excess water and the spillway runs - which isn't often), the bottom sediment is not quite so deep. That's probably the biggest factor in a pond that is already established because you may well not want to end up trying to excavate or you could end up with a big mess. I'm thinking that a mix of small gravel on the bottom layer to build up a little base, topped with a bunch of sand, may at least give us some of that stability we're after. It's likely a project that will require periodic restocking of your sand, but that's a fairly inexpensive thing. In our case, the big area company that sells block, concrete, gravel, sand, etc. is no more than about 4 miles away, so delivery charges are negligible for us, which is really nice. We will also look at maybe using plastic sheeting or some sort of geotextile fabric on the bottom as an additional means of protecting the sand. As well, don't forget that you'll need to build a berm of some sort at the outer boundary of the beach area to slow the sand from exiting the desired area. Just a few thoughts. Take some time to research constructing a beach here on the forum as it's a topic that has been discussed frequently.

Welcome aboard and know that you aren't the only one who has spent way more time surfing the site than you probably should have - it doesn't get any better even after you've been here awhile!

Todd,

Thanks for the tips. Early in my military career we used a metal matting (Marsden Matting) on the beaches in the Pacific. It was developed in WWII. It would make an excellent base for applying sand. Don't know if anybody even makes it anymore but I may try some Google searches and see what happens. It would also make an excellent boat ramp as it was designed for military equipment that need to be landed on undeveloped beaches.

Hey, that's a very cool sounding idea. You'd have to get the sand pretty deep on it to avoid exposing it to bare feet, I would guess, but it could be a good solution to a soft bottomed pond. Keep us posted on your progress.

Welcome to the forum! We love photos... If you have some of your pond, we'd love to see!

Not sure if I did this correctly because nothing is showing up yet, but file manager says: Total Files: 1 so we will see.

If it worked this is a Google Earth photo. The pond was a sand barrow pit that filled in after the sand was sold.

Todd,

Here are two sources for the matting. Unfortunately, this one is temporarily out of business due to tornadoes in OK: http://www.calumetindustries.com/

This one has the product but seems expensive and that doesn't include shipping: http://store.colemans.com/cart/landing-mat-aluminum-p-1136.html

You're right about bare feet. Think I'll look for another solution. This stuff does make good boat ramps.

PP

Kelly,

Thanks

How did you do it?

Do what? Measure the lake, or post the picture?
The lake's image is measured and captured in hi-res through Google Earth PRO - and then cropped, at which time the measurement-text is also added.
To post the image: it must first be saved to an on-line photo storage-site (ie. Photo-bucket, Shutterfly) and then the image-link URL from that site is pasted into a post on Pond Boss.
I simply wanted to know where your referenced lake was located. So, I used the coordinates that appeared in the image that you linked to locate your lake. Once located, I measured it (takes all of 30 seconds) and saved the image, then inserted the measurements in text-overlay and dumped it into Photobucket, then inserted the Photobucket [IMG]URL into my post.

I found that same company in OK while looking for the materials online today, PP. Funny that you also got them, but it seems they have one of the best offers on it when they haven't been destroyed by a tornado.