Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Building a dam New Pond Plans, Need Input

Jeff,
Thanks for the input. I have searched through the threads but can't find any specific information on which species of submerged grass is good. It looks like hydrilla is off the list.

Brettski, I'll have to post some new pictures. It now looks like the Hoover dam.

Chris, I LOVE fishing Dardanelle. In my opinion, by far the best fishery in the state. Due in large part to all the variations of structure and grass.

I posted a new thread in the building structure section. Does anyone know how to anchor objects when you're faced with nothing but hard slab rock under 3-4 inches of clay. I tried driving T-posts in the ground today to no avail. I don't know how I'm going to get all the brush I want to place to stay in place.

ALERT THE MEDIA:

"Otto states you better listen to JHAP."

Cm thanks me for my input.

Finally after almost two years and over 1,700 posts JHAP provided some useful input.

Oh GREAT!! This is all I'll be hearing about for the next week. "Otto said you better listen to JHAP"....

The dirt work is almost complete. We are building a road to our future homesite at the same time and my contractor made the suggestion of adding shale to the road instead of gravel. It just so happened that the west ridge was made entirely of blue shale. I trust my contractor so I told him to cover the road. He guaranteed I wouldn't regret it, especially since it will save me tons of money vs. gravel and in his opinion is superior to gravel.
This is where the shale was taken from.


This is where it was used.




This is a picture of what used to be the pasture. Nothing but dirt now. They had to scrap to get the dirt needed for the dam but it worked out. The pasture will be much smoother now and everything will drain properly.


I'll post more pictures as we progress.

Looks like all you need is the water. Please keep us posted .

Otto

Water and a lot of fish cover. I'll definitely keep everyone posted on the multiple 'mini-projects' related to the 'big project'.

How much rain have you gotten? It has been raining here the past 3 days.

We've gotten a few inches. The cooler temps and rain were needed badly.

The shale will make a good road saw some shale roads around Paris this last weekend and they really held up well

Keep the pictures coming, let us know if you got enough rain to raise the water in the pond any.

otto

I went out yesterday and the pond didn't come up at all. The area got just enough rain for the the grass to start growing on the dam. There are predictions for rain Friday through Tuesday. I'll post some pictures soon.

Here's my .02. First, GREAT looking dam and super esthetics. With springs in your pond that continually feed water, be aware that too much water can put pressure on these springs and have a reverse effect - they may force a "back flow" and take water from your pond. I've seen this once and heard about it many times. Just a word of caution. The experts on this site can give you a more creditable evaluation on springs in the pond. Looks great and looks like you have a lot of "good help". JJ

Thanks Jimmydee. I'm a little worried about the springs as well. I guess time will tell. I wanted to give everyone an update on the pond.

This first pic was the wheat and rye grass starting to grow on the pond banks and dam. It was looking real nice and plush due to recent rains.


Then, disaster struck. I went out a week later to check on things and . . . . no grass. WTF?



On closer inspection I saw millions of little caterpillars on the ground eating the grass.


I did have lots of dove out there and I was getting excited about the upcoming dove season. Now all that's out there is a bunch of crows. I guess they're eating up all the caterpillars. At least the pond came up about 2 feet with the recent rains. I also have all of the fish structure in place.







I have also been doing some maintenance on the tractor and ATVs. I wonder if I should re-seed the dam? Any thoughts? I guess my next big project will be a dock. I'll tapping into some very large brains here on pondboss, so get ready for a lot of questions.

Although GW could probably answer this better than I but I don't believe at this point that the Warmouth Technology Foundation can help you much. The WTF is a brother organization to the GSA and our organizations normally intervene only when you want information regarding our respective beloved species or when someone is abusing the aforementioned genetically superior fish.

Looks like it's time to do some catepillar stomping, dang those things look like they ate your grass crop.

Great looking pond in progress.

Experts?



There are a lot great threads on pond docks and when you have questions make sure you post them.

The "before disaster" ground cover on the dam picture looked very encouraging. The "after disaster" pic is troubling - did all that grass get beat back (see if it recovers) or completely washed off (reseed).

...this makes perfect sense to me

My contractor said they were Army worms. He's seen them eat entire fields of crops. Anyway, he says I should re-seed and then spray for them.

Yep that what we call army worms. When they eat a wheat field they can been seen from above just marching across it mowing it down. I guess thats why they are called army worms... I have actually seen them so bad that when I got down on the ground with them I could hear them crunching, as they ate the entire field down.
I hope it was my imagination but others have told me the same story, and yes we have an airplane spray them.

It's been a torrential downpour in Arkansas for almost 48 hours. Went by the pond and I can't believe how much water is in there. It has come up 10 feet or more. I'll take some pictures this weekend and post them.

OK, here's some updated pics. From the looks of it, it seems like 8 more feet would be normal pool level. I'm going to try out the siphon this weekend and make sure everything works properly before another hurricane comes through. Will it be alright to stock FHM and BG in early October with the muddy water?







I'll let you know how the siphon works.

Is that white metal chair part of the structure

Nope. Those are my relaxing chairs. Actually, my great grandfather bought those chairs. We are going to refinish them one of these days.

We like to refer to those as "safety chairs." They are to be used when you feel it would be unsafe to work due to excessive heat, extreme hunger, loss of ambition, or presence of alcohol. There are many reasons to promote the use of such a safety device but too many to list them on here. Not to mention that I may overlook some and I don't want to cause a safety violation somewhere, but you get the idea. We have some chairs just like that, and danged if they wouldn't make great structure wouldn't they??

My pond is 1 year old and we repaired the spillway this summer because of 17" rain in 9 days back last winter. The spillway had a decent growth of rye grass. This week Gustov hit us hard and the bottom approx. 120+ feet washed away again. This time I had a thick crop of bermuda grass 6" tall, fertilized last spring w/ 10-20-20 & 13-13-13. This summer I also used miracle grow, so you know it was thick with deep roots, but it still washed away. I have 120+ feet of pond liner down now to stop it from washing out any higher up the spillway.

I was thinking maybe next summer when things dry out, to put large chunks of that gray rock where it is washing out up to the top of the spillway. I know I will not be able to mow it, but I could weedeat it. What do you guys suggest?

Turflok reinforcement