Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain New .75 acre pond in Virginia, need help!

Hi Everyone,
My parents have a farm in Hume, Virginia about an hour west of Washington, DC. In order to get my wife and I to bring the granddaughter over to the farm more on weekends they are having a pond constructed (I am an avid bass fisherman who spends most Saturdays out on his bass boat), the farm is short of activities that draw people down there (it gets boring to put it bluntly) and a trophy fishery will definitely help!

The pond is almost finished and will be approximately .75 to 1 acre with depths as deep as 18'. The pond is fed by a creek and a spring. Construction should be finished this week. The pictures below were taken yesterday and when finished the dam will be 4 feet higher and the bottom will be dug out more. We will be adding several large stumps, rock piles, a "fish house" made of cinderblocks and concrete slabs, a few large logs, and 4 of the porupine fish structures (1 large one for the far shore bluff wall and three small ones for the sloping shallow shore) and a wooden dock which is being constructed as I type this. The area around the dock will not have any stucture as a swimming area will be set up around the dock.

Here is the pond as of yesterday:







Sloping shore:






My hope is to grow trophy bass (around these parts anything over 6lbs is a trophy) but I have not decided on largemouth or smallmouth yet. I know I need to get the forage base going, my intent was to wait until the pond was 4-5 feet deep (should be mid-March if not sooner) and stock 40-50lbs of fathead minnows, 20-30lbs of shiners, along with crayfish/snails/tadpoles/daphnia. Then wait until fall before stocking 500 bluegill, 200 RES and 50 bass of either largemouth or smallmouth variety.

Would threadfin shad be a better forage fish than shiners? I have seen people suggest that a few goldfish will be helpful for alge removal, is this true? Should I stock catfish (I don't plan on eating the catfish but I hear they do well at cleaning up the pond but hurt the bass)? We will be adding a feeder if we can get sufficient power to the area but that is not a certainty, can a feeder be run off of solar panels? I know the stocking numbers I proposed are on the high side but I know the FHM will get annihilated by the bass and bluegill and I figured too many pieces of bass candy would not be a problem and would get the bluegill and bass off to a good start. Am I right?

I have a bass boat and fish tournaments on the Potomac River regularly, I hope to catch big bass but I don't see myself ever throwing worms under a bobber for bluegill once the kid is old enough to graduate to a spinning reel. If the bluegill get big and provide bigger bass then great but I am not looking for a trophy bluegill pond at the expense of the bass. I am sure my daughter will catch bluegill but I will get her into bass fishing so she can join me out on the river; hopefully she will be casting for bass in the next three years just in time for these pond bass to be in the 3-4 pound range.

Any help or advice is appreciated! I know I wrote this post in a hyper manner but thinking about this pond gets me psyched!!!

Hey Rock,

Welcome to the PBF! I also have a 1 acre pond. And if I had to do it again I would have stocked BG and HSB. As many have stated on this site trying to get a trophy LMB pond out of a 3/4 to 1 acre pond is almost impossible. Don't mean to burst your bubble! And if you try it and get it to work let me know what you did cause I love to bass fish too!


Good Luck, The pond looks good by the way!

Thanks for the response! There are a lot of ponds in the area of this farm that produce big numbers of bass with the occasional 5lb+ fish. I know that most of these ponds were stocked by the standard "pond mix" that is dumped in the water by a truck and then never thought of again. I also know that most of these ponds have no structure in them at all. I had hoped that with a more patient stocking program I could end up with a good population of bass ranging from 3-6lbs with more small bass that we could regularly harvest. Is my hope an actual possibility? If I just wanted to get the biggest bass I could out of this pond (not trophies but not 100,000 identical 8" fish) what would the best approach be?

Welcome to the forum Rockville, gonna be a nice pond. As far a feeders go most will operate fairly well on just battery power but you can get solar chargers for most of them, and since your feeding go with the aquamax Largemouth pellet, it's big and 45% protein.
Also if you want big bass don't overdo the amount of structure so they will be able to get at your forage.
Hang on and you should get info from the bass experts, good luck.

Keep holding; I'm no expert.

Dynamics to consider. These are POND Bass101

1. The AVERAGE BALANCED pond can carry about 100 pounds of predators per acre. A predator is an animal that eats smaller animals.

2. It takes 10 pounds of forage(smaller fish, frogs, etc.) for a bass to gain one pound.

3. A bass needs to consume prey that is 1/4 to 1/3 its body size. This means that it has to have more calorie intake than energy expended. From this we see that a 3 pound bass could starve to death on minnows.

4. Bass are spawning machines and have to be managed(culled). And it's a lot of work. After the 2nd year you need to cull every bass 14 inches and under. If you don't the pond becomes what we call "bass heavy". The smaller bass eat the normal forage before it becomes large enough to feed the larger bass. The bigger bass suffer and lose health. And, those smaller bass get conditioned to the top of the line predators presence. They get lockjaw and refuse everything with a string attached.

These are the reasons why RC51 is saying that bass are really hard work in a 1 acre water hole. That's why a lot of us are thinking more about HSB and pellets.

HSB aren't an option in VA as they are illegal to stock. Just FYI on going that route...

If you can source pellet trained SMB I'd say they may be as good of an option as I can think of for what you are trying to accomplish. Good luck finding them in the mid Atlantic area though, we aren't exactly blessed with a large number of fish hatcheries to choose from. You can stock non pellet trained SMB, however I would attempt to keep them from having much success in spawning. This should prevent them from becoming too abundant and over eating their forage.

Speaking of forage, you have a new pond which means you have the golden window to establish a well rounded mix of forage species. Be patient in stocking them and you'll reap the rewards. Stocking SMB over LMB will mean you have a better chance of having at least a few species of forage naturally reproducing in your pond, particularly if you keep their numbers in check and provide good habitat for your forage fish.

Forage species I would highly recommend for a SMB pond in northern VA would be:

fathead minnows
bluntnose minnows
banded killifish
spotfin shiners
satinfin shiners
golden shiners
tessellated darter

If you decide to go the LMB route and not the SMB route, then your sunfish(BG/RES) will be the backbone of your forage as the LMB will almost certainly remove all the other non spiny forage fish. If you go the SMB route, I would skip the BG and only stock RES with possibly some redbreast sunfish. SMB struggle at best to properly control BG reproduction, even LMB struggle to control BG reproduction here in northern VA.

Skip the threadfin shad, they will not over winter in northern VA. Do not stock goldfish. They will make a muddy mess of your water and don't eat aquatic vegetation. If you can source a safe crayfish species, they would be fine to stock. Just understand that some crayfish dig holes and can damage your dam. If you don't plan on eating catfish and don't have much interest in fishing for them, skip them. They'll just compete with your bass for limited forage a 3/4 acre pond can produce.

In northern VA, it probably will be 3 and more like 4 years before your bass hit 14". Even with good forage. We don't have nearly as long a growing season as the south does... That is why a 6 lb bass is big around here! Research the forum... Understand how to measure and weight fish and keep track of relative weights. Do forum searches on SMB to decide if you want to go that route. The one nice thing about SMB is if you do decide on them and later don't like them, stock a few LMB and within a few years they'll be gone and you'll have a LMB pond.

Hume is a beautiful area, you can see that in your photos. Best of luck! Read up... There's lots to learn here in the archives and by doing searches with key words of interest to you.

Thanks for all the help guys! Harvesting fish will not be a problem if I go LMB or SMB but I am leaning towards SMB since I think they fight better and make better table fare. Will SMB survive on FHM, GSH, RES and crayfish or will I need to add something else to the mix? If a 3lb bass will starve on minnows then what forage would be ideal for larger SMB and should I stock that forage now or wait until fall when I stock the bass? Would stocking a smaller number of bass potentially be a good thing so that they can crow quicker and take longer to annihilate the FHM population?

I have been looking at finding a hatchery that sells bluntnose minnows/banded killifish/spotfin shiners/satinfin shiners/tesselated darters but I have had no luck, anyone know where I can get them in this area?

I was planning on using this hatchery for my FHM, crayfish, GSH, RES and eventually Bass: http://zettsfishhatchery.com/ Does anyone have any experience with them good/bad?

Catmandoo as well as a few others here have experience with Zetts WVA and there are not many complaints. Dave's comment about "3 lb bas starving on minnows" was ment for primarily for LMB not less regarding SMB, although larger smallies do much better on larger forage than primarily 3". IMO 4 lb SMB is equivalent to abt 6 lb LMB. The only way you will get the "bluntnose minnows/banded killifish/spotfin shiners/satinfin shiners/tesselated darters" is to contact CJBS in private messages or collect these fish from the local waters. If you go with these smaller minnows IMO and experience you will need some submerged vegetation cover for them to maintain long term survival. Hardy hybrid water lilies 'small varieties' work well for this. The only ones that Zetts sells in this category are 'Bronze Commanche", Indiana, and Yellow Chromestella. Also see Lilypons Water Gardens in Adamstown, MD. There is quite a bit of old topics discussion here about water lilies for farm ponds.

Thanks Bill!

Is stocking Yellow Perch a good idea and if so when should I add them? My experience with YP comes primarily from fishing for them in very deep water during the late winter on the Potomac River, they are delicious and fun to catch but I was under the impression they are predacious on fingerling bass and can raid spawning nests. Then again bluegill do the same thing... I am pretty sure I will stock SMB at this point and I want to be sure that I add something for the big ones to prey on and I hope YP could be the answer.

Welcome to the forum. I'm just west of Winchester, and know the Hume area well.

I don't think you will have any success with bass without having bluegill. It would be very tough. Before you start stocking, I'd suggest you order two of Bob Lusk's books -- "Raising Trophy Bass", and "Perfect Pond -- Want One?" (Pond Boss Book Store) Both are excellent primers on what you want to do. I'd also suggest a lot of reading here on the forum. There is a lot of info about what you want to do. We'll also be very glad to answer questions.

Zetts does a good job. It is best to call first to find out what they have available. Plus, they like to have you call in your order. They stay pretty busy, but they will have your order boxed and ready to go when you arrive. Zetts doesn't always have SMB, but they always have LMB.

The "Fish Wagon" (Fish Wagon) out of Arkansas will be coming through to the Southern States stores in about two weeks, but I doubt you'll have enough water in the pond by then. They do a good job, and come through about four times a year. I know they will be stopping at the Winchester store this time, and I believe they do the Middleburg store. It is possible they do the TSC in either Marshall or Warrenton. If you have enough water, they can provide fathead minnows, and their prices are much better than Zetts. The Fish Wagon charges about $1/lb. for them, with a 10 lb., minimum.

Ken

I've got lots of experience with YP and SMB in NW OH. The combination works well in my experience. I've never seen where the YP raid SMB nests unless YP are over abundant and too crowded and there is a lack of smaller minnnow forage, thus the minnow diversity suggested by CJ which is an especially good plan if you go with YP and SMB. Quite a bit of info here also on the YP and SMB combination. Minnows of spotfin, satinfin shiners and bluntnose minnows and crayfish are very important for this combination to be really successful. I've found that YP eat lots of YOY crayfish if they are available.

Thanks Ken I will give them a call.

The dam and excavation will be completed by Friday and the posts for the dock will be done Friday as well, I am going to the farm on Saturday to meet with the builder and use his heavy lifting equipment to place some structure and create a gravel bed. After that he will be doing some tests to ensure the dam is good to go and then the valve will be closed. The builder expects the pond to fill in 10 days, the creek that fills it runs pretty fast and has an 8 foot waterfall that flows hard even in dry weather. Adding fish in 14 days won't be a problem at all.

Are Yellow Perch essential to grow larger SMB or can I expect to grow some 3+lb smallies with just FHM/GSH/RES/Crayfish/frogs?

YP are not essential for growing 3 LB+ smallies but it helps esp if the smallies are also feeding on pellets (smb pellet trained can be very hard to find). SMB at 3 lbs are very nice smallies at 17.2"-18" long (std wt). If you can get YP that are pellet trained they will easily grow to 12"-13" long and some to 14"-15" with a regular diet of high protein pellets. YP at 3"-5" make good forage for adult SMB, but so do GSH and RES primarily because RES are minimal spawners and rarely over populate. Read more info here on spawning habitat for smallies. I'll see if I can locate some links. If you plan on having enough frogs to feed some smallies plan on having a significant amount of cover esp emergent shallow water vegetation for the frogs and tadpoles. Smallies seem to like tadpoles. YP do not eat bullfrog tadpoles in my experience.

I see that Lilypons Water Gardens has moved to Adamstown MD. http://www.lilypons.com/
The 'Changeable' lilies are always smaller varieties with small spread, slower growing, and staying in shallower water of mostly 2-4ft.

SMB Spawning and Biology:
http://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/smallmouth-spawning.html

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=181122

http://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/growing-smallmouth.html

http://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/smallmouth.html

http://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/smallmouth_bass_stocking.html

SMB Stocking - Management
http://www.sdstate.edu/nrm/outreach/pond...ul-Aug-2004.pdf

Your location is in one of the best places anywhere for a pond. The soil is perfect -- perc sites for sanitary drainfields are difficult to find. You've got lots of excellent watershed, and springs, that provide ideal pond water. And, even during dry periods, adequate moisture gets ripped out of the clouds as they pass over the Blueridge.

However, before the builder leaves, here are a couple of things to think about, if they weren't already addressed.

You mentioned a spring as one of the water sources. If it is in the pond, hopefully it is one that runs even during serious droughts. If not, it will act as a drain during the dry times.

The stream is the second concern. We normally don't recommend damming streams because of the volume of water they can produce during a big rain storm. In the photos I don't see an emergency spillway. With the thought that the pond could fill in as little as 10 days, I do hope your builder put in a very large standpipe that can handle at least double the average stream flow this time of year. And hopefully, they put in a very substantial spillway for our heavy rains.

I regularly travel Route 50, Route 55, Route 17, and I-66 through your pond area. I'm not sure how many times I've seen new ponds washed out in that area due to inadequate spillways. There are some very good pond builders in the area -- and there are the guys with excavating equipment who will give you a good dirt moving quote. Hopefully, you got the first.

Good luck,
Ken

I am glad to hear that our soil is perfect! Having read through a few dozen threads on this board written by guys losing their mind dealing with soil issues and dam issues I realize we are very fortunate!

I spoke with my Father about the creek and apparently I was slightly off when I said the pond is both spring and creek fed. While there is a spring in the bottom of the pond and a creek that feeds the pond apparently the creek itself is spring fed and flows no matter the weather (although obviously at times of heavy rain it flows harder than times of drought). The stream starts about 300 yards above the pond and has a waterfall with an 8-foot drop so the water should be well oxygenated when it reaches the pond. The spring-fed stream runs directly into a larger flowing creek known as thumb run which eventually empties into the rappahanock.

No emergency spillway was built because the pond is totally reliant upon this spring, the overflow pipe is 18" pvc and should be sufficient from what we are told.

Here is the aerial view of the pond before construction (pond outlined in blue), the stream runs through the woods under the pond and the creek above the pond is thumb run:


I don't have a good picture of the waterfall but I will get one on Saturday. Here are some of the spring-fed creek when we first began construction:



Here is the overflow and the drain pipes on the outside of the dam:




The only bad thing about our layout is that we would have to take GREAT caution if we ever empty the pond for maintenance to avoid having our fish populate Thumb Run.

Ken I know all ponds are different and there is no easy answer to this question without more data that I do not have at this point, but would it be fair to say that most soil and spring water in this area is fertile and does not require fertilization and/or aeration? I keep reading that many people put a few tons of lime down on the bottom of their pond before filling it and our builder never suggested this and none of the ponds nearby did this before filling up as far as I know. I just want to know if this is something I should be worried about. Your post essentially said that this area is ideal for a pond, I just want to know if ideal means good ph/alkalinity etc.

2 things I see about the overflow/drain pipe on the back side of the dam.
1) I believe it's too small (diameter for the drain pipe). If you get a lot of rain, the 18" pipe won't be able to get rid of the water fast enough, and without an properly constructed emergency spillway, the dam could wash out if water flows over it for a length of time.

2) There isn't enough protection around the 18" pipe to keep water from starting to eat away at the backside of the dam. I'd see if you could run the end of the pipe further away from the dam, and place a lot of large sized rocks for the water to fall on to help prevent the outflow from digging a large hole.

Has the contractor dug other ponds that hold water? Have you or your parents looked at them? I'm saying this because there are a LOT of people that can move dirt very well, but don't know squat about properly constructing a pond.

How much watershed flows into the pond? If the pond builder doesn't know, then there's no way that he can properly figure out the size of the drain pipe. The pond has to be constructed so it will withstand a "100 year rain event" without the dam failing.

If it fails, and there are houses downhill, then there's the possibility of your parents being liable for some if not all of the damage.........

I think you might be better with the SMB than the LMB. You don't need BG unless stocking LMB, they will overpopulate with SMB.

I need to talk with my Dad and the builder to see what the situation is with the spillway. I am pretty sure that the back of the dam is not yet complete since the pictures were taken when they needed to add 4 more feet to the dam. We got a permit to build the pond and it is very close to a flood plain so I think the emergency spillway is going to be a short trench to the flood plain. There are no houses behind the pond, just hundreds of acres of grass fields that our neighbor does absolutely nothing with (he won't even let cows graze on it).

The builder lives 1/2 mile from my parents farm and does tons of work for them especially when my parents are in DC during the work week. He feeds cows, repairs fence lines, renovates barns, helps cows deliver their babies (which is really tough work), helps us sell cows etc.

He has built numerous ponds in the area. Here is the google earth image of the one on his property that was built 20+ years ago and which he emptied out last summer and renovated. This image was taken shortly after the pond was drained and before the dam was rebuilt, the dam on this one is HUGE:

I just confirmed that the emergency spillway has been constructed and that the 18" overflow pipe is being extended another 30 feet away from the dam. This stuff was all planned and my pictures were taken while work was still underway.

That is very good news. I believe you are heading towards success. Now we just have to pick a good day for you and your parents to schedule a Pond Boss fish fry!

Hopefully we didn't stress you too much, but the old timers here have seen a lot of pond disasters that didn't need to be.

Good Luck,
Ken

P.S. If you are thinking about getting fish from the Fish Wagon on March 9 in Winchester, maybe we can hook up for coffee at McDonalds.

Sounds great!

I somehow missed answering this.

We are pretty fortunate in this area for multiple reasons. You certainly could put lime down, but it would have to depend on the pH of the water coming in. I would not base it on the pH of the pond soil.

Although we receive a lot of acid rain, we also have a lot of limestone in our soil. Additionally, our watersheds flow over and through a lot of different materials, which tend to neutralize our water. My rain gauge may show a pH of 5.4, but the water flowing into my pond is always very close to 7.0 as it passes through everything. My pond stays at a consistent 7.0.

It may take as long as two or three years for your pond to stabilize due to the disturbance of the soils below it. Just keep track of it. You mentioned cattle in one of your posts or messages. The cattle are probably going to fertilize your pond with manure, but they could also overwhelm it, depending on how many of them there are, and if the pastures are fertilized. There are a lot of mitigation techniques if they overwhelm it, and you can always add fertilizer if they aren't doing their job.

Until you have the pond for at least one full season, I don't think I'd do any chemical enhancements.

Ken

CJ, a question for you regarding the forage base for this type of pond. You've mentioned in other threads that you've sourced Orange Spotted Sunfish (OSS) from Zimmerman Fish. How have they worked out?

I realize they aren't for everyone, as you have to pay aquarium prices and breed them, but that aside, how do you see them fitting into the forage base of this sort of Mid-Atlantic SMB/YP/RES pond, if you could grow out a decent number of them and get them established prior to stocking SMB and YP? How prolific are they -- one spawn per year, or multiple, BG style?

Thanks.

David

I am still in the learning stage with OSS. I know Dr. Willis did studies on OSS as SMB forage in South Dakota. If you do an internet search it is available on-line if I recall. From what I have seen so far myself, OSS only spawn once per year. Their ideal habitat is turbid backwaters. However, they seem to be very adaptable to other habitat types as well. I am also starting to think RBS(redbreast sunfish) make a good choice as SMB forage as well. They are more fusiform than BG, making it easier for the smaller mouthed SMB to prey on them and they only spawn once a year, making them far less prolific than BG. They also seem to prefer similar habitat as SMB. Unlike OSS though, they will reach sizes in excess of 8" and can themselves produce quality angling. There are a number of hatcheries in the southeast that sell them to include their mutant color form.

Rockville, there has been some discussion on the site that one issue with SMB is that they can be tricky to source, especially at times other than the fall, and that our neck of the woods, the Mid-Atlantic, isn't exactly SMB Central in the best of times. Zetts, for example, doesn't list SMB in their catalog.

I keep a google doc in which I cut and paste every post I can find from this site relevant to the kind of SMB/YP/RES/diversified minnow pond I plan to have (and which I couldn't have imagined before I discovered this site). As I was putting in CJ's helpful remarks about RBS, I happened to see an older post from Ken in which he mentioned that he had purchased trout from Steve Haines of Flowing Springs Farm in Rio, WV and that he has a SMB pond that's fed by the outflow from his trout raceways. Might be a source to consider.

There's a pretty good group of NoVa/WVa folks (not many Marylanders other than you, for whatever reason) on the site, including, as you've seen already, some of the most active and knowledgeable posters. I hope you'll join the gang and especially keep those photos coming.

Get plenty of shallow cover in for all that forage to thrive in. Habitat substrates, provide surfaces for bio film to grow and ultimately feed your fish as well as provide cover to grow to the desired size for your bass.

Thanks for the kind words dlyle! I double-checked Zetts' catalog and they do list smallmouth although they say "very limited quantity" http://zettsfishhatchery.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/CompleteCatalog.pdf I put a call into Zetts and left a message. I have no problem stocking forage in early spring then introducing smallmouth in the fall. I know it would be ideal to let the pond sit for a full year before adding predators but if smallies are only available in fall then I will just have to stock more forage fish this spring to account for the shortened breeding time.

Well I went up to the farm Saturday morning expecting to start making smallmouth beds and placing various cover only to learn that we have to postpone that a week as the rains on Friday slowed us down just a bit. There is still a bit of dirt that needs to be moved and the emergency spillway needs to be completed. Now I will be going down next Saturday to lay out the structure. On the good side this means that the porcupine attractors I ordered should be in by then and I won't have to dump them in to an already-filling pond. The construction guys are moving the rest of the dirt today and the posts for the dock are being added tomorrow. We have a ton of rocks left over from the excavation and we have a truckful of gravel being delivered Wednesday. The guys will be making a 15' wide, 20' deep, 4" thick gravel bed on the right shoreline (as you face the dam) on Thursday. Here are some updated pictures:

Here is one of the springs, taken from where the emergency spillway will be:


Here is the spring from the top of the dam:


The dock is going to be installed on the shoreline on the right:


Here is where the emergency spillway will be, we are getting short on dirt so we are digging into a hill away from the pond and bringing more dirt in to build the walls for the spillway which will channell that water into the creek:


Closer view of where the mouth of the spillway will be:


The right shoreline (the light brown part) is going to contain the gravel bed:


This is our shallowest area, at the opposite end of the dam. The creek comes through here, I will be making some smallmouth beds here:


This area already has a nice brush pile:


Here is the waterfall, unfortunately the leaves have covered a lot of the water flow so you cannot see how much water is coming through:


Here is the spring-fed creek above the waterfall:

Top of the waterfall looking down (darn leaves ruining the picture):


Views of the pond from the top of the waterfall:

Very pretty! Lots of rocky structure would be great.

I would recommend smallmouth bass as well. In a pond that small it would be very easy for the bluegill necessary for largemouth bass production to get out of control.

I have never seen a pond with too many fathead minnows or golden shiners in it.

My number one focus would be on constructing great habitat for forage. You will want those fatheads, shiners, and crayfish breeding like mad. If your water will support them I would recommend lake chubsuckers as well. They get larger and they make fine forage for smallies. Also, don't forget the grass shrimp! They can add a lot of meat to your food chain.

I don't have any experience with yellow perch and smallies, but I can tell you that yellow perch are a great fish on their own. I can see how they could be useful forage for smallies.

Construction on the pond is 95% complete, the only thing preventing it from being finished is heavy groundwater coming up from the springs and soaking clay before it can be applied to the slope of the dam. They dug out a lot of clay and spread it out to dry, when it has dried it will be applied to the inside area of the dam to give it some slope and prevent erosion. On Saturday I went up with my Daughter to lay out the fish structure, I arrived with 5 porcupine fish attractors, 4 wood pallets, and 25 cinder blocks. Since the remaining work is focused in one area we felt that adding the fish structure now would allow the cap to be put on the dam as soon as the final work was finished this week, some of the structure might be moved out of the way to allow for rollers but they will be moved right back. Per my father's request we did not put any structure in a 30 foot radius of the dock so that nobody dives off the dock and gets hurt, personally I don't think anyone will be doing much swimming here but I could be wrong.

Wood pallets with rocks, cinderblocks, and gravel. The tops of the pallets will be in 5-6 feet of water:







Here are some big rocks surrounding some huge stumps and logs. This will be in water over 10 feet deep and I expect to catch a lot of fish off of this:





A big rock pile next to the logs and stumps, good crayfish habitat:



Our dock which is currently under construction. The main posts are drying in concrete and the diagonal supports will be removed once the concrete is set. I put two of the small porcupine fish attractors under the dock to ensure that it holds fish:





The three big porcupine fish attractors each weighted down by a cinderblock, these will be put in the creek bed once the last work is finished:

Here is my version of a smallmouth bed. It has 6" of big gravel inside it, the rocks and blocks will act as a shield keeping silt from covering all the gravel. I would have liked to use smaller gravel but this is what we had to work with, perhaps I will buy 20 bags of pond gravel and pour it on top next saturday. I will be putting one of the porcupine attractors in the creek channel in front of it:





Here is another big gravel bed that we surrounded with two big logs and some big rocks to act as a shield from the silt. This is 20 feet from the other smallmouth bed. I expect this to be home to a lot of crawfish and a place where smallmouth get it on:







From the dock looking at the gravel bed/smallmouth bed:



Here is the dam with the clay drying on top:



From the dock looking towards the dam, we put some huge logs and two rock piles in to attract fish, one of the fish attractors will go here when the dam work is done:

From the dam looking back to the dock:



From the dam looking to the shoreline accross from the dock, notice how much water is coming out of the spring. We already have a lot of noisy frogs calling that puddle home:





Back of the dam, was seeded (along with the a lot of the pond interior) on Friday with rye grass:





I have blisters all over my hands, my car has cinberblock fragments throughout, I ruined a good pair of boots, and my back aches but when there are fish in here it will definitely be worth it! Should be ready to stock our first minnows in two weeks!

Are you weighting down the logs? Can't tell from the pics.

The stumps in the middle have some rocks on them but otherwise they are not really weighed down.

Yeah, I bet your back hurts! All that structure looks great! But those logs and stumps will want to float. Before my pond filled, I bought some cheap metal fence posts and sledgehammered one next to each stump, then drove nails through them to anchor the stump. At one stump, I could only get the post down about a foot and hit rock. when we got water it floated. I had to anchor it so it wouldn't float around and sink somewhere I didn't want it. Took a couple months before it finally soaked up enough water and sank.

Your pond's gonna look great when it fills!

That looks great! Very impressive! Love your thought process on choosing the SMB/YP option. Looks like you're going to have some happy fish.

Thanks for the kind words! I guess I am going to have to go up next Sunday and hammer those logs down! I have no idea how I will keep the biggest one down....

crossed TPosts over each end or some concrete blocks with cables.

Would drilling a 2x4 into a tree and sticking the other end in a bucket of cement work?

I expect it would.

Search for duckbill earth anchors. There was an article about them in PB magazine a year or two ago. I got mine at a local feed store for 2-3 bucks each.

Those look like just the ticket! If I can find some locally I will buy them, if not I will fill a few buckets with concrete, take a long wire and a small piece of wood to each end, wrap the wire around the tree and stick both pieces of wood into the concrete bucket.

OK time for some pics! Here is the pond as of 4/15/12, it is about 4' from full pool thanks to the recent drought:












Here is the creek feeding the pond, this will be covered by 2-3' of water when everything is full:

So yesterday I took the family to Zett's fish hatchery in WV and we bought 1000 FHM (unfortunately 20% were rosy red minnows since they raise them together), 200 3" golden shiners, and 100 crayfish. It was pouring rain and the pond had risen 2' from the previous week but the water also seemed to be pretty cold and the air temps were barely in the 50's. I forgot to take pictures of the stocking until I got to the last bag of minnows. Here are the FHM/RRM after sitting in the pond for 20 minutes with several cups of pond water added in 5 minute intervals, they took off as soon as I lowered on side of the bag:







I should have taken more pictures of the pond itself but it was cold, I was soaked, and my daughter was quickly losing patience with the whole situation. Now I am working on sourcing some satinfin shiners, spotfin shiners, tesselated darters, and bluntnose minnows to be added. If the weather cooperates I will hopefully get a chance to meet up with Travis and go seigning for them on the Potomac River, if not I have found some promising leads on the internet. I will also be adding grass shrimp (as soon as the pond reaches full pool and I plant some lillies and spiral eelgrass), banded killifish (as soon as Zett's has them available which should be in May), and some RES (Zett's says they will have them when I get the banded killifish). Then the pond will sit until I add 30 SMB and 100 YP either in the late fall of 2012 or spring of 2013.

Sounds like you are well on your way! I just hope there were no hitch hikers in the FHM you bought. Those rosey reds sure do stick out don't they!

On Friday I went up to the farm as I had a delivery of spiral eelgrass, hybrid lillies, and grass shrimp arriving. The pond was 15" from full pool and hopefully will be filled to the brim by this upcoming weekend. I planted the eelgrass in 2-3" of water along the shoreline and planted the lillies in a flat that will be 2.5' deep at full pool. The shrimp arrived from Fattigs fish without a single floater and they swam off quickly after being acclimated. Here are some pics:
The shrimp:









The plants:



The Pond:





Some shallow pallets that are halfway covered:



This upcoming Friday I have a shipment of spotfin shiners, greenfin shiners, bluntnose minnows, and johnny darters arriving from Jonah's Aquarium. Since some of these only spawn in crevices I took CJBS2003's advice and made a 24" tall stack of cd's and spacers and hung it from the dock where it sits 4" off the ground in shallow water. The picture does not really show the 5" of cd's that are already underwater. At full pool it will be totally submerged and should allow these fish to multiply rapidly. I have enough blank CD's leftover to make another one and hang on the other end of the dock (I ran out of spacers this time). Here is what it looks like:





The week after next I will be adding banded killifish and RES and then I will be done stocking until the late fall or early spring when the SMB and YP get a chance to wreak havoc on all this bait!

Oh and the fathead minnows and rosy reds have already starting multiplying, they were everywhere! I also saw many golden shiners in what appeared to be a pre-spawn mating ritual. I would see a shiner chasing another shiner through the shallows only about a half inch behind the lead shiner, I saw this happen 5 or 6 times throughout the pond. Hopefully they spawn like crazy! Oh and millions of baby tadpoles have lined the shoreline, there will be frogs aplenty in a few weeks!

Looking great!

Really cool. How many each of the "exotic" forage species did you stock?

I will be stocking 50 bluntnose minnows, 50 spotfin shiners, 50 greenfin shiners, and 30 johnny darters. I will also be stocking a couple hundred banded killifish and some lake chubsuckers this summer. The numbers of stockers are low but with no predators and plenty of spawning areas they should get established by the time I add the YP and SMB.

On Friday I had some new fish arrive from http://www.jonahsaquarium.com/ so I headed down to the farm to stock them. I had 50 Greenfin Shiners, 50 spotfin shiners, 50 bluntnose minnows, and 30 johnny darters; all arrived alive and well packed. If you are in need of forage fish that are not readily available definitely call Mark at Jonah's Aquarium and see what he can do for you!

I got all the fish acclimated and released them, they all looked to take to the pond well except for some of the greenfin shiners. I saw 4-5 swimming in rapid circles then sinking down before spinning again. I guess they needed to be acclimated longer. An hour after release I saw 3 dead bluntnose minnows but hopefully the rest are good.

The pond is now 4" from full pool and is full of spawning fish. I saw millions of 1/3" fry swimming around the dock which I assume are fhm or gsh. There are schools of shiners swimming all over the place and the shallow areas are chock full of fatheads. I even saw a large crayfish eating what appeared to be a dead fathead. No sign of the grass shrimp and the spiral eelgrass I planted a few weeks ago appears to have disappeared with the exception of four or five plants that do not appear to have grown or spread. The hybrid lillies are still where I left them but have not grown much or spread, hopefully this summer they will take off.

I built a second CD structure for the new minnows to spawn in. On Sunday I saw several fish swimming in and around them so hopefully it is working.

Fish acclimating to the pond temperature:


Johnny Darters:






bluntnose minnows:




Shiners (not sure if these were the greenfins or the spotfins:

Second CD spawning structure:


Lillies in the shallows with billions of tadpoles and minnows:




My pallets totally submerged:


Overall pond pictures:








Now i just need to add some banded killifish and red ear sunfish and the forage base will be good. I am hopeful that a feeder will be ordered and ready to go within another 2 weeks (that is a whole different discussion with my Dad).

Looks awesome... Glad the fish came in from Jonah's. Those smallies are gonna love their new home next year!

Will darters survive after SMB are added?

With the right habitat, yes.

I would like to send out a big THANK YOU to Travis for meeting with me on the Potomac yesterday and helping me collect some banded killifish and tesselated darters, who would have thought that running a seign through snake infested waters could be so much fun!! We ended up with about 50 killifish and 20 darters for my pond to go along with 20 easter silvery minnows that he put in his forage pond.

After returning home with my catch in an oxygenated cooler I brought the family down to the farm to release our newest forage fish. I had also ordered more eelgrass to stock as the last crop did not seem to catch on (I planted them in 1" of water as the pond was still 15" from full pool and I don't think they survived loing enough to be fully submerged). The wife and I planted all 50 corkscrew eelgrass plants, these were much larger than the last batch I stocked and I am very confident they will take hold. The killifish and darters were acclimated for almost an hour as we planted the eelgrass, when I tipped over the cooler they took off like bats outta hell!

The pond is now at full pool and there are fathead minnows EVERYWHERE!!! The tadpoles that dominated the shoreline a few weeks ago are much sparser now, in there place are thousands of fatheads of various sizes.

Some of the hybrid lillies I planted last month appear to have established a foothold, they are not spreading but they have pads on the surface and appear to be very much alive. Unfortunately a 6-8" copperhead was seen swimming near the pads.

My wife is an expert crayfish hunter and she noticed dozens of small crayfish along the shoreline and a few larger ones eating dead fatheads.

I did not see many of the golden shiners/spotfin shiners/bluntnose minnows/greenfin shiners/grass shrimp but when I went out to the end of the dock and threw out some AM600 into the middle of the pond the shiners appeared along with bluntnose minnows and larger fatheads. The shiners and bluntnose minnows would school under the feed just out of sight and individual fish would scream up from the school to hit pellets then swim back down with their quarry where other shiners/minnows would help them break it apart.

Before feeding the fish I decided to take a plunge off the dock and the water was nice and warm until you got below 6' where the thermocline kept the water 20-30 degrees cooler. This will be a heck of a swimmin hole! My Wife and Father were on the dock and saw millions of fish scream towards the dock when I dove in.

I saw 30+ fish holding to each of my CD structures. They were 1-1.5" long and appeared to have a blue streak on their side. I am hoping they are spotfin or greenfin offspring as all the spotfin/greenfins I stocked were larger than these.

Unfortunately my phone's battery died so I did not get any pictures but I am going up on Wednesday to meet with David Beasley of Solitude Lake Management to get 100 redears stocked and to get some water samples taken to ensure I have the right alkalinity/dissolved oxygen/hardness/conductivity etc. and I will get some photos then.

Correction: Just heard from David Beasley and our appointment has been moved to June 20th.

Glad to hear the killifish and darters made it.

So I took the day off yesterday and met with David Beasley from SOLitude Lake Management at the pond. We stocked 100 RES, installed a new 125lb texas hunter feeder, and he took some water samples that he is sending to the lab. The feeder came with a bad timer but David returned first thing this morning to install a new one. The RES looked very healthy and took off into their new home. David commented that we had a very good zooplankton bloom and that the forage plan was especially good!

I planted 50 new corkscrew eel grass plants three weeks ago, my Dad had told me that he didn't notice them last weekend so I wanted to check to see if they were gone. I found most of the plants where I planted them but none had spread yet and many looked like they had a brown leaf or two. I was worried that maybe my crayfish had been eating them but that did not appear to be the case. David said they looked stressed but that I shouldn't panic. The water temps were in the mid-70s which is cooler than I expected and might have something to do with the reluctance of the eel grass to take off. If the eelgrass doesn't start to rally by the 30th I will make an order of Valisneria Spiralis and see if that works better than the Valisneria Americana I had planted.

Fathead minnows are everywhere. I did not see much shiner, killifish, bluntnose, or darter activity but I did see enough to let me know they are in there. I suspect my golden shiners never spawned as they were only 2.5-4" when stocked and I have not seen any fry other than the fatheads. I will wait until at least next summer to add the yellow perch and smallmouth as I want to be sure the other species get established and I am just not seeing enough from them at this point.

After David left I skinny dipped off the dock as there was nobody in sight and it was very hot out. I don't think there is a more refreshing activity on a hot day than diving into your own pond! My dog loved the pond as well and swam many a lap!

Here is David testing the water:



Here is my dog having a blast:

Well thanks for not showing a picture of you skinny dipping.......
Awesome pond !

:-) No pictures of skinny dipping

Yes, thank you for leaving the skinny dipping photos out! HAHA

GSH often hang out away from shore and may be less visible. Did you see any of the killiefish you recently stocked? They are pretty easy to tell apart from the other species... Get that minnow trap I mentioned in the PM and let it soak next trip out and see what you come up with.

I did not see Killifish but since there are literally millions of fhm and I stocked approximately 50 killifish I did not expect to see many.

I am now just starting to see large numbers of YOY killifish in my pond. They are very distinct from the FHM young once you know what both look like.

Looks great. I hope when my little slice is all finished it looks that good!

Nice pond! I've always loved the rolling hills of VA. Very beautiful state.

Thanks for the kind words guys!

Following CJBS2003's advice I went and bought a minnow trap but it did not arrive on Saturday so I could not try it out yesterday. According to the tracking number it will be here today and I will get a chance to try it out this upcoming Saturday and see if my various minnows are established.

If the trap comes as shiney wire mesh it is beneficial to spary paint the trap drab colors. Minnows will often shy away from bright colored traps.

The one I got was black. http://www.amazon.com/Minnow-Crabfish-Cr...rds=minnow+trap

We are interested to hear how well this type of trap works. How big are the throat openings?

Bill, I saw the specs:

Product Features
Crabfish Net Trap is made of nylon net with circle alloy frame design
Minnows enter the trap at both funnel shaped end holes size is 6.5cm in diameter approx
You are bidding on a Crabfish Crawdad Minnow Fishing Lure Trap Pot Cast Net
Size: 107cm length, 27.5cm width
Weight: 275g

I'm bad at converting metric to USA.

Size: 42 inches long, 11 inches long. Weight: About .6 pounds. End holes 2.5 in. If I did my conversions right.

I have had great luck with it. The biggest down side of it is since it is net material, the turtles will destroy it at times. It is also very light weight so it can be a trick to toss out from shore. Lowering from a dock is no problem though. However, because of a bigger opening it lets bigger fish in. It also has a built in bait holder.

The zippered bait holder was a cool feature. I will be loading that up with some dog food and pellets on Saturday.

How long do I let it sit? I was planning on testing several different depths but if it takes 5 hours per spot then it will be tougher to get it all done in a weekend.

The trap will usually contain or hold fish well until the bait is gone then they fish start looking for exits. Soak time and catch success often depends on bait type, depth, type of fish, time of day and weather conditions. I've found that shape, and size of trap also have influence on catch success.

Here are the results of the water testing, it looks like I need aeration!

WOW, No O2 below three feet that does not seem very deep.

Be careful. That depth can move up with little warning in the heat of summer and when it gets much lower (0 or under 3 mark near the surface) you have too high a fish kill potential for me to be comfortable.

I wonder once your ell grass beds get establiched at deeper depths will that help with O2 down below..

Isn't that depth measurement in meters, not feet?

Yes stratificaton is at about 6.5 feet between 2 and 3 meters.

So getting an aeration system in is of utmost importance I take it... We are over 1100 feet from the house so trenching a power line is going to be a big undertaking, windmill aeration is also an option...

Ohh, Meters.

I'd trench in a airline, and keep the compressor near the house. I know of a pond that has an airline running 900 feet with no problem, and no icing problems in the winter.

Or at least get an emergency system (boat motor or paddle wheel) in place.

It is a little early for the thermocline to be at < 8 ft.