Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Selecting a site Sand-Pit Pond????

Hello PondPeople:

I'm new to PB and amazed at the wealth of knowledge on this site. Can Ya'll help? I recently purchased 5 Acres (an old sand pit) and Im having 3 Acres excavated to a depth of 3'-20'. The thing is that the fresh water table justs sits there at a certian level. In otherwords i will be excavating the sand out below the water table. theres no Dam, Spillway. Ect, Just a hole. the water leaches through the sand so you can't drain it. Although you can pump old water out and let new water leach back in. My ? is will this be ok to use for a trophy bass lake. Its located in Extreme south texas, outside Brownsville apx 1/2 mile from Mexico. Yes the water is fresh, the Neighbor has 25 Acres(20 under water) down to 90' deep in some areas, still fresh water. Any feed back would be greatly appreciated.

Forgot ask, Has anyone on this site built a pond like this? is the water in those sands like a river, always moving? will i be able to fertalize or would I be wasting time?

LWJ - I assume that the sand pit is near or adjacent to a river system with moving water. If so, fertilizing will be tough with the water constantly moving through, at least that's the case with sand pits along the river systems in NE. I'm thinking a pellet feeding program for the forage fish would work well in trophy bass program. Feed the forage base well and it will transfer up the food chain to the bass.

I do know that in NE it is illegal to apply fertilizer to bodies of water.

One other thing to consider is to have a well thought out stocking program, since you can't drain it down, once its stocked it will be hard to change it once it gets going. The other thing to consider if there is a river nearby what will happen if the river floods, will this bring in undesireable types of fish into the sand pit? Freqeuntly sandpits here end up with all sorts of fish, gar, big head carp and other things that get washed in during floods.

Hi LWJ

I used to swim and fish in a sand pit. The water was crystal clear, even after a hard rain. You could see groups of bass prowling back and forth. It was a pretty sight, but the bass got so hook shy that I couldn't fish it often. The bream and bass were pretty thin, because sand is not fertile. I think the only food they got was a few insects that blundered into the water.
No doubt you'll have to feed as SHorty said, and perhaps dig some shallows for the forage species to hide.

Thanks for the quick response. Yes this pit is .52 miles (google earth) from the Rio-Grande River. Does that mean the water in my pond will be flowing and moving slowly through the sands? Is there a way to determine the flow rate? As far a flooding from the river is concerned. It is possible but not probable. There's a levy system between me and the river and the Rio-Grande is not so Grande anymore. As Far as stocking goes, very simple. Fl.LMB,CNBG, FHM, threadfin Shad. Maybe gizzard Shad in the future.

that sounds really nice LWJ, and welcome to PB. shorty and bobad give excellent advice. and as DD1 mentioned on yer other post, i would hope your water supply stays constant.

the most common way in my business that we estimate groundwater flow rate is conducting whats called a slug test, but you'd need a small PVC well screened across the water table near your pond site to do this.

you should be able to estimate a seepage velocity using a dye as well.

i'm sure there's other ways to do it, those just come to mind.

suffice it to say that if it is all clean sand (i.e. no silt) you could have conductivity values ranging from 1 to over 10,000 gallons/day/ft2.