Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Selecting a site Beaver pond woes

Well im new to this,it seems like a very informative forum and i think i should be able to add some interesting subject matter.......Ihave to think where to start.....9 years ago i purchased a 100 acre piece of property. I searched extensively before buying this plot,much of New York region then New Hampshire. I had certain criterias that had to be met in finding,( in my opinion) was the perfect piece of America. I needed something remote and rugged. i needed something that looked wild and was. But most of all, i need someplace that was blessed with a supply of springs and a large pond,not shared by surrounding plots of land. I finally found what i was looking for. The perfect plot.... seemingly unaffected by the workings of man. Natural surroundings at its finestwith above all a large pond located in the middle of the plot!
The pond aprox. 7 acres in size was natural not manmade thanks to some beaver that years before decided it was also a nice place.The pond (after some detective work accomplished with a small john boat) i found to be 12 ft at its deepest 30% @8ft, 30%@5ft 20%@3ft, 10%below3ft, 10%above 8ft. The pond is fed by several springs that surround the pond and has an average outflow of perhaps 65gal/min, the water ph is neutral and the water clarity is very clear year round.
now.....lets get to what is really unique about this paticular ecosystem......years before it was one big pond, it exsisted as several smaller ponds (created by the beaver) one small pond fed into the next...into the next...down the line. I found this out talking to some of the older natives.....These ponds where loaded with native brookies( you could catch your limit in 20 min....then go back for more, it had seemed like an inexhaustible supply of frsh trout for the dinner table.
Then it happened......a freak thunder storm....one perhaps worse then anything encounterd in recent memory...proceeded to dump huge amounts of rain on the land. The first beaver dam started to over fill from runoff( caused by inappropriate logging practices), and overfill it did causing the dam to break apart.The sudden huge rush of water slammned into the next beaver dam, breaking it up, and so the domino effect... down to the next dam below that one ,then the next, right down the line........all was lost....and all that remained was a small little brook that twisted and winded through the scenic little valley.
It remained like this for a few years....that is untill the beaver decided the surrounding food source merited some major construction. And so they built back a large channel dam much larger then anything before. The pond that followed grew to the size it is now about 7 acres, much larger then anything before. Maybe a few months later, a new custodian came to the land, happy to be there and appreciate all it had to offer, and that was me...
ok .....if your still with me i guess your interested . Lets get to the problems. one of the things i wanted to accomplish with this pond was trout production ... after the washouts the fish never came back so i tried stocking brookies , that didnt work my guess is the pond got so big water temp became a factor, August bottom temp reached 70 degress. next i tried rainbows with no luck. Lately ive been considering LMB any suggestions?
There are photos of my pond on next page.

mtnlobster
Is your pond in the catskills or the adirondaks if so I can offer some advise.
Scott

Its in New Hampshire, 3/4 up the state,close to the vermont border

My consideration is with the Engineering. Now, I don't know anything about up North dams, but in Texas, beaver dams always silt up and sooner or later wash out. Is there any way to make it permanent or are up North beaver dams different?

Imade it permanent about 6 yrs ago. I put in a earthen damjust below the beaver dam

Dave
They are the same up north here but I think more stubborn, and a little more schooling on how to harass pond owners
Scott
Catskill Pond

Thats right! nothern beaver can be a real pain in the neck. however if you stop a min and consider what the animal is capable of its really quite incredible.Ifind them to be rather fascinating animals, sometimes ill be observing one 2ft away while its standing by its damn trying to figure out what in the heck i am. And that tail slapping....its kind of comical.
In my pond the beaver are there to stay.....i mean after all they where there before me, so i decided tha they could be an asset more then a hindurance.
Thia is a great forum for pond owners, and you guys seem to be quite knowledgeable.......anybody have any suggestions on how i could make my pond make me some money??

1st buy a nice rifle,try the new 17 caliber rimfire excellent distane shots, 2nd make sure the damn you built will stay when the beaver one goes (and it will) 3rd give up on the trout mother nature had something going you will never duplicate unless you are willing to start over make it deeper or not so big so you get the flow of water back to keep it cool and get ready for the headaches. 3rd large mouth are a lot better anyway contact your local fishery for stocking info and have at it. You could also do smallmouth who put up a better fight either or are great but not both according to my hatchery you can do one but not both. As for making money set up a charge for fishing we have one around here called Cat fishermans paridise they charge to fish and its always packed all the time rain shine or snow. but serously, I like beavers as much as the next guy but you have to get rid of them or they will forever be a pain. Maybe buy live traps and reenter them someone else far away if you dont want to destroy them your choice. Good luck

bc,
The new 17HMR is a very nice round for apx 200 yrd shots at groundhog size animals but that little .17 cal 17 grain bullet has little penetration & most probably would only make a nasty superficial wound after passing thru a beavers thick wet fur.
There are lots of trappers who would love to rid anyones pond of beavers. You can ask your local wildlife officer for names of local trappers.
Ric

What an interesting project! Can you provide photos? Photos of dam(s), pond, beavers at work (close-up shots, if possible).
In the meantime, I'll think about what you can do to create and maintain a fishery, too.

i have lots of pics how do you get them on here?

mtnlobster,
Go to the topic HELP under General Questions , It's the last topic heading on the forum. Third post down is How to Post Pics
Ric

Hey Dave, Don't belive what they say about "up north Beaver" being more pesky, I lost my dog to a monster Texas Beaver, drug him right under, barley made it out with my own life.. (up north beaver)HA!!

hey Ric ,i cant find helpor general questions where is it, want to post pictures right here is it possible to do that?

mtn,
On the main Forum page you have topics:
Open
Pond Construction
Stocking a New Pond
Managing an Existing Pond
Aeration
Aquatic Vegitation
General Questions

Each has subtitles .. IE: Open only has one .. Questions and Observations

Under topic General Questions the last subtitle is Help
It should be the last (bottom) listing on the main forum screen. Click on Help & then pick the 3rd post which is POSTING PICS EASILY.
Ric

This is how I did it.Have P.B. open on a new topic where you want to post your link. Go to www.photobucket.com start a new account, all they ask is a user name, password and e-mail address. They instantly send you an e-mail with operating instructions. You simply download your chosen pic to your photo album.Once you see your pic (in small) in your album, just click on it to enlarge. Right click and copy the URL from that photo. Now bring up P.B. again and click on the URL buttom next to the gremlins. Paste your URl here, remember to delete the "http" prefix because it's already there from copying. It will then ask for a title for your web page. This is where you type your photo name, i.e. My 14lb Rainbow. Ya right.
This stores your photos on the net. Posting the link as described allows us to see them. You can allow viewing of you whole album as well.

thanks for the info Ric!

It sounds to me like you have the perfect SMB fishery. The cool (but not cold water) and streams make it sound perfect. I assume your not particularly interested in a panfish, since you originaly wanted trout. You also must have a native population of baitfish (which I would be very interested in hearing more about). You should be able, assuming you get some yearly reproduction if small, to grow trophy smallies. True they aren't very competative against LMB and BG but try landing a 5lb one on a fly rod! They actualy have crayfish patterns designed for SMB.
BTW, sounds like you have a slice of heaven, if you need someone to inherit it, I would make the sacrifice and move to NY.

thanks for your recomendation. Iwas actually thinking about SMB however lately ive been leaning towards LMB and pumpkinseed as forage

Why pumpkin seeds? they don't get near the size of BG?
here is a link to fishbase.org, this is what they say about pumpkins
http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.cfm?genusname=Lepomis&speciesname=gibbosus

Lakedoc believes that smb spawn better with some current and I have also read of them spawning in rivers. They are really a river fish, being quite populous in the upper missippi. If you have creeks with rocks flowing into your lake I think you should get above average SMB recruitment. You may want to had rocks or gravel. I don't know how many fields you have near by but farmers ussaly collect piles of field stones you may be able to get just for hauling them away.

tyw if you had read my original you would know that my pond is all spring fed. The springs supplying this pond are all very cold aprox 45degress , they most come from deep under ground trough a shale slate stratum . I always wanted to investigate these springs to see if i could increase there flow somehow. Unfortunately i never had the time to do it. IN any event the springs feed the pond with a total flow of perhaps 60gal per min....its all in my original posting ,you should read it, its still there! anyway i included pictures of my pond you can get alot from them .They are a couple of posts back from this one. i appreciate all the suggestions and comments and find them all interesting!

I am not by any means an expert, but I would not throw out the idea of trout all together. As you said, they were once native. That would mean to me you have the climate, soils, water etc to sustain trout. The size, shape of your pond may have changed, but these essential elements have not. Even as a suplementary species, you may consider stocking a few. Aeration will most likely help you to achieve your goals regardless of species. I am partial to trout, not for their taste, yuk, but pound for pound are hard to beat from an angling point of view. (And that's all my repressive gov't will allow pond owners to stock). I also wonder what happened to your planted trout, are they actually gone, or just hard to catch. See, now I upset both the bass fisherman and now you. Just my 2 cents anyway. Good luck with your pond, you found the right place here anyway. Wood

mtn,
I would have to agree with Wood, except I very much like the taste of trout. BTW Wood is the one who posted the inst. for posting pic's.
Also .. very nice pond! Like the pic's.
They started moving dirt yesterday for my pond!!!
Ric

Wow! beautiful site. I miss New England as I used to live a stone's throw from the New Hampshire line in Massachusetts. I have fond memories of catching brookies in a spring fed lake near my house.

That said, as one who is raising brook trout right now I would not give up on trout either. 60 gpms of flow is more than enough to keep trout if you manage it right. However you may want to attempt to divert runoff from summer thunderstorms in the future if you go the trout route again.

I have an 88 by 59 by 9 foot deep pond on my property that I have grown brook trout over 5 lbs. with only 38 gpm. The pond is about 117,000 gallons.

The trick with trout as you probably know is you must keep water temps between 55 and 65 (most of the time but you can go a little higher if D.O. levels remain high) with at least 6 ppm of oxygen. If you can do that you are home free. From my limited experience I have found you should have a pond that has a low surface area for depth to keep temps cool but I also use a 1/10th hp compessor/diffuser system to keep the water circulated. However I heavily feed my fish and removed over 500 pounds of trout from this pond this fall. If you do not stock heavily, do not feed, and have water that has a low surface area ration to depth you should be fine w/o artificial aeration. However it would be a good idea to do some form of natural aeration as in a fall or something just like they do in stream improvement. I would think you should be able to have a pond up to a half an acre with 60 gpms if you do everything right or even better would be again a series of smaller onds as you had before

Obviously your original three ponds did not warm up as readily as the one larger pond. And correct me if I am wrong but I believe you had a drought recently which may have contributed to the problem.

If it was me I would go with the trout in a hearbeat and I do understand your leaning to the pumpkinseeds if need be as they are a cooler water fish than bluegill and probably are easier to obtain in your area.

Wood ive been meaning to thank you for posting those instuctions, its imprtant for me to post pics , i was thinking it may give people a sense of where i should be headed with plans for this pond. as far as the trout .....well i stocked aprox 100 rainbows initialy about 6 years ago and the following year stcked 30 brookies and since that time never once had i seen a single fish rise! and im talking hours apon hours of observing the surface of that pond. Do you think its possible to have trout in that pond even after going 6years without seeing a single one rise to the surface?

Mtn, your welcome, I'm just happy I could finally help someone, I have gained so much from these people and don't have much to give back as I am fairly new to this and also a lot of the topics are regarding fish that don't live here. As for your trout, I also find it strange that you saw no risers. Even though they spend only 10% of their feeding time on surface, you should still see some. Evenings until sundown is when I see most action on my pond, it gets pretty boiled up if there is a hatch going on. Even with predation and normal mortality, you think you would have seen some. Six years is about it for pond trout from what I've learned, so they would be on their way out by now anyway. It seems you have a challenge ahead. Enjoy it, Wood.

Thanks Wood,this may sound corny, but ive been diggin woods and wild for as long as i can remember and challenges have always driven me!I have always been fascinated by waters.At times it almost feels more like an obsession....im not sure why...

There are times when i feel like i was born in the wrong century...

wow................heyWOW,how did i, little ol me......get to be a lunker? IM NOT WORTHY....IM NOT WORTHY! What an honor! i hope i can live up such high esteem!

mtnlobster, beautiful pond. i really liked the pics with the fog. very nice, i bet it is a nice retreat/peaceful. so you became a lunker huh? see my memory of when i, too, became a lunker under general questions "willow tree" question... what a wonderful day, huh?!! mark

10th post already! wow were does the time go??

well i appreciate all the favorable comments directed towards my little beaver pond! however what i would truely benefit from is somemore great suggestions as to what i could do with it , thanks to everybody!

Mark,
Mtn said he made it permanent (put in an earthen dam) 6 years ago in his 3rd post I believe. He's wanting suggestions as what to stock. Used to have brook trout, but water temps are too high now.
Mtn,
I don't understand why your water temp is so warm ie: 70 deg @ bottom. Was that in the 12 ft area? It sounds like maybe the problem is too much shallow water. Maybe the beaver have removed alot of trees that used to shade the pond? If deeping the pond is out of the question then I would stock SMB. Smallmouth are my next favorite fish next to trout. But first put in some fathead minnows & crawfish NOW. You'll have to ask one of the pondmiesters when to stock your preditor fish but I would think maybe next fall.
Ric

oops...my bad..i missed that one line about the earthen dam. sorry. i deleted the post.

thanks ric mark

Ric you are correct in that i did build a great earthn dam !I can drive a vehicle across it! however the way its set up now , there are two 24" culverts draining the water that goes over the beaver dam . The beaver dam is still intact and reguarly maimtained by two famlies of beaver .There dam is directly in front of my manmade dam.There is no spillway at this time .I feel if and when i put one in i can probably increase the overall depth of the pond 3 ft. Now as far as the fish.....i must come clean....this summer , July i guess i started stocking forage fish . i went to a nerby lake that is managed for LMB (and has been for many years) and caught up some pumpkinseed ( they looked to me like bluegill). any way i put some in that month the next month and some in early sept...a total of perhaps 140 fish, along with them i put in 5,5" SMB and2, 7"LMB. now you must know, for years before this summer, i had never seen a single fish in the pond and never seen one rise. Now i was a commercial fisherman for 20 years , so i know what a fish looks like when it breaks water. I tried fishing the pond as well ...to no avail...
Anyway in oct., i went up to do some work and apon arrival i took a look in the pond first thing.... i always do that out of habit...and to my utter amazment in the pond close to the shore were some tiny fish 50 or maybe 60. They were all about 3/8 to maybe 1/2 inch in length. I proceeded to check some other shoreline areas and found them everywhere. So i after observing this , i made the conclusion that it was most likely the forage fish that had spawned although after doing a little research i found out that pumpkinseed only spawn one time in early spring, and i stocked , or started stocking after the 4th of July of this year.
what do you guys think?

yes it was 70 deg in the 12 ft area, now that was in august during a year of extreme drought . i felt the same way you are thinking to much shallow area in the pond 4 or 5 ft warmed up the water to much

MtnLobster....I would quickly get a minnow trap (or a few of 'em) and throw them in the pond & see what you catch. Or try to net something.

I've read some conflicting info. about when certain types of fish spawn. For bluegill, I believe I read that they could spawn any time the water reached a certain temperature.

Those fry you saw could be from some fish that managed to live through the past cycles of your pond. Identifying them would seem to be very valuable to plot the next step.

Smallies all the way!!!!!!!!!! & BTW, great pics of your place.

Sunil

Mtn,
I agree with Sunil, try to capture & identify the minnows. If you are considering SMB read the posts under Types of Fish To Choose SMB in a 3 ac. pond by TYW33. Very intresting topic reguarding SMB & BG. If that raises your intrest search for posts by lakedoctor reguarding SMB.
I don't know why lakedoctor hasn't posted lately but he had extensive experience on the subject of SMB & contributed greatly to this forum. I miss him alot!
Anyway I get the feeling you haven't completely decided on your end goal with the pond and I would suggest reading up on SMB. Anyone can have a LMB pond especially if they listen to the instructions from the experts on this forum & purchase the lit from Pond Boss which by the way is a really smart investment!
I'm stocking trout with a back-up plan for SMB if it doesn't work out. I can go to any body of water around me & catch LMB. I have nothing against LMB .. love to catch them, but have always wanted to catch a very large trout or SMB. So .. I'm going to grow my own!!!
Keep giving info as to what you have & read on here as much as you can which should cultivate some pointed questions. Post them on here .. there is ALOT of experience here!
For myself .. I'm very thankful I found this site!
Ric

Iread the posts on SMB-BG as forage combination. Wow that really sounds like an exciting and in my situation very viable alternative. When do the smallies spawn? What time of year would be best time to introduce a good number of them...i think at this point if i dont get any winter kill i have a jump on my forage base...what do you think? I have seen crayfish in the pond naturally but not many of them .I really have no idea as to the extent of the population of crayfish presently existing in the pond.

mtnlobster,
Here's one of lakedoctors posts I saved:

lakedoctor
Lunker
Member # 422

Member Rated:

posted May 15, 2003 03:32 AM

To start from scratch on a pond stocked for smallies get a good forage base of crawfish then add some tadpoles,fathead minnows and wait 60 days.Then stock your bluegill and smallies.The smallies don't target the big bluegill 4to6" like the largemouth but they'll sure take care of the 2to3" to keep the population down, then you'll end up with a pond that will have some monster smallies and some monster bluegill and one hell of a fun place to fish.To get the Smb to spawn just make a creek bed.Put rocks and sandy gravel in 3to4' of water and there you have it.The thing that I do alittle different is put in a horizontal water flow thru the fake creek bed, not alot of flow is needed but a little bit makes a world of difference. DOC

I don't have a good source for crawfish but I remember Bill Cody mentioning a source for papershell crawfish. I'll have to find one soon since my pond is being built now.
Ric

Hey Ric, anybody know where i can purchase some geneticly superior SMB & BG stock. I wonder if there are any regulations prohibiting the transport of fish from one state to the next. I thought i heard once that that could be a problem i need to get the fish to New Hampshire. Imean we are talking about tiny fingerlings for stocking procedures ill have to research that somehow. Im thinking now of stocking first thing in the spring as soon as the ice leaves.

MtnLobster: I got my smallies from Keystone Aquaculture near Harrisburg, PA.
Call John Sproch at 717-834-6772.

I don't know if they are "genetically superior" but I'm pretty sure he gets them from somewhere in Illinois.

They can be shipped overnight. If you place a big enough order (say $1,000 to $2,000), they may deliver them for a fee.

As far as the crayfish, I frequently catch LMB in my lake that have fat angular guts and are spitting out half digested crayfish when you catch them. That's awesome. Can't wait to get a smallie doing the same thing.

Chances are if you see crayfish in your lake, then you probably have a good population of 'em. Make the rock beds, and they will come.

I haven't found a good source to buy bulk crayfish yet. If anyone knows of a place, please let me know.

There is one type of crayfish to avoid. I believe it's called "rusticus" or something like that.

Happy Thanksgiving!
Sunil

mtnlobster
If your looking for small mouths that you can stock and be happy with results try zett's fish farm in Pa. If not Bass hatchery Inc. in Mass. Small outfit all they raise is SMB's. Cray fish we can ship you in spring
Happy Thanksgiving

Phone # for Zett's is 814-345-5357. One person to ask for is Andrew. They're a little west of State College, PA.

Thanks Sun, Scott I tried getting the # for that place in Mass that only sells SMB and couldnt locate it any ideas?

The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land.

Thomas H. Huxley

mtnlobster
I will look for number we are in the process of expanding the buiss. and paperwork is packed away. I believe the man's name is Frank Parsons INC. We stocked 6000 fingers 2 years ago in a dense lily lake and they did great their main forage was newts and bullheads. Most of the people around the lake also set up bug wips which is a site to see them feed at night.
Scott

Scott whats a bug whip??

we make them up here but you can find them on the market i think they have them in PBM. You mount them on a pole over the water and Bugs are attracted by the light and a weed wacker line rotates inside and knocks the bugger into water and instant protein for the fish. Do not use a bug light you will just end up with a pile of bugs that are not on the menu.If you use Bat houses there is really no problems other than bat's tend to fly around the light at night. If you have a slingshot and small marshmallows you can keep the kid's busy . If you have heavy frog population great method for thinning them out and feeding bass

Good Luck

Hey that sounds great! never heard of it before. Thats what makes this site so excellent im sure im gonna pick up alot of info from you guys its seems like you have been in the buisness of ponds for a long time . Knowledge....its a great thing!As far as the frogs...i have a huge population in the pond, along with newts some painted turtles ,lots of water bugs.........quite a few wild ducks every year there seems to be a little more and like i said , i have seen a few crayfish but not many....dont know how many exsist in the pond. As you can see by the pics i have some water plants but not to many with exception of cattails which seem to be abundant around perimeter of the pond.
I have been researching SMB , the more i read up on them ,the more i think they would be the best choice!

It's like a bull whip, only smaller

There are 404 species of cray fish in N. America. If you have water 3/4 of the year you have crayfish. With little or no fish predation you probably have alot of crayfish. Try a crayfish trap or looking for them at night with a flashlight. Anyplace I look for crawdads I find them, I wouldn't worry about how many you have.

TY , im bringing up some traps next spring. I planned on checking out the crayfish population. and doing a minnow exraction to see excactly whats going on with that. I think its impotrtant to positivly identify them,even though im99% sure i know what they are. As far as predators you were correct when suggested SMB thanks ! im pretty excited about starting that.taking my location into account do you have any idea what kind of growth i could expectwith the bass?

Well, Smb only live about 7 years, males have a shorter life expectancy and spawn at 3 or 4 years depending on thier size. Males spawn no more than two times and ussaly one. So most males do not survive to be 6.
Fishbase.org is the place I go when I need specifics on any given fish. Here is their site for SMB
http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.cfm?genusname=Micropterus&speciesname=dolomieu

Notice they have a link to growth estimates and data. All thier graphs are in log scale and using complex formulas to estimate length, weight, and mortality. I didn't completly grasp it, but I'm working on it.

It seems to me , if i can get some nice smallies goin in this pond i might be able to set up a nice little "wilderness" fee fishing spot. i havnt reseached it at all and dont have any idea how to set something like this in motion. however, i have a notion that there might be people around that would jump at the chance to fish at a pond like mine and have a chance at catchin some smallmouth "bullies". What do you guys think?

mtnlobster: If I understand your situation, you don't live at you lake (an absentee land owner).

I wouldn't create a fee fishing site. I think the more people that know about your beautiful pond, the more people will try and fish it without permission. Also, those that do fish it w/ permission may end up doing damage to the fish: gullet hooking, foul hooking, hooks in the fishes eyes, etc. Plus you may get more litter, both intentional and unintentional.

For our lake, we de-barb all of our hooks. I mostly fish w/ live bait, and occasionally gullet hook some fish. I keep those de-hooking things on me, so that I can free up the hooks and release the fish.

When you think about the potential income from fee fishing, I wonder if it's really worth the few hundred buck you might take in.

I'm an absentee land owner. However, if you lived there, that may be a different situation. In my experience, most of the people who have trespassed at our lake and land have little to no respect for the property.

For a smallie to become a monster lunker, think of all the years of TLC you'll have to put in.

Sun sounds like you know what your takin about!Your points make alot of sense. Anybody else have a different point of view?