My new fishing hole is almost finished. Been working on it for a year now. Here are a few pics. We dammed up the creek a month ago, and there is already over 15' of water in the lake.
It should be about 10 acres when full. I'll be stocking bait fish next week. This area was solid timber a year ago. Loggers came in last March and cut the timber.
I'm flabbergasted! I guess the saying that everything is bigger in Texas is so true! The scope of this project is hard for me to grasp but it is going to be awesome when it is done. Keep the pictures coming and congratulations!
Here's a couple of pics I took today. The water came up so fast my welder is having to work from a flat bottom boat to try and finish the framework on the pier.
Did a GPS plot today and it showed just an uuch under 10 acres. That's the first attempt to measure the surface area. There are 13,600 yds of dirt in the dam.
Dave, I wanted the bottom to be a mess! I pushed over 200 stumps that I dug up with the track hoe back into the bottom for structure. May get a hook or 12 hung up, but the fish should like it.
Here's a couple of pics I took today. The water came up so fast my welder is having to work from a flat bottom boat to try and finish the framework on the pier.
Did a GPS plot today and it showed just an uuch under 10 acres. That's the first attempt to measure the surface area. There are 13,600 yds of dirt in the dam.
Dave, I wanted the bottom to be a mess! I pushed over 200 stumps that I dug up with the track hoe back into the bottom for structure. May get a hook or 12 hung up, but the fish should like it.
Lynyrd, Very impressive undertaking you've got here. Please continue to post pics as your project nears completion.
Looks great, Did anyone give you $%#^% when you stopped the creek?
A couple of my neighbors who are friends have razzed me a bit, but that's all. Everyone down stream knew I was gonna hold up the water for a bit. With the rain we are getting now, it will be flowing through the siphon pipe in a couple of days. Thursday will be 5 weeks since I stopped the creek, and it will be flowing again by Thursday.
The 12 inch spillway pipe kicked into full siphon mode about 6PM today. I've never seen one flow before! I had planned for it, hoped it would work, but dang it's really something to see that rascal pump. The water was landing about 15 feet from the end of the pipe. With all the rain we've had, I still expect the emergency spillway to overflow tonight. I have 530 acres of watershed, so my problem is more getting rid of water than catching water. The emergency spillway is 40' wide with 4' of freeboard above the bottom of the spillway. I think that iw needed with this much watershed, even with a 12" siphon.
Here is two pictures of just before it went into siphon, and one in full siphon.
Last edited by Lynyrd; 03/09/1510:02 PM. Reason: added photos
I made a couple of small mistakes on the siphon. It did not come on by itself. In fact, it was vapor locked and would not let any water through at all. I had to bleed the air pressure off of it before it would start. But, I know what I need to do to fix it so that it will self prime, and it won't be a hard fix.
What kind of max depths will you have at full pool? The deeper the better.
Average depth in front of the dam is 17 feet. The creek channel is 6 to 10 feet deeper. I will also have about 3 acres of water in the shallow end that won't get over 5 feet deep.
Just a little update. I put in 15,000 FHM, 7,000 CNBG, and 700 CC this week. I'll get the LMB in June and the BCP in October. Not sure about the shad yet. Water has been flowing through the spillway pipe non stop for a month now. It's going to be interesting to see how far into the summer the creek flow keeps up with evaporation. I still haven't finished the pier yet. Most of the time it's been too muddy to get a truck down to the pier with materials. I really need some dry weather to plant grass and finish the pier.
I read this forum for countless hours before starting my project, and have put many, many things I learned here into my build. Thanks to everyone for sharing your knowledge.
After a year of doing nothing but work on the new lake, I'm looking forward to have a day or two off every now and then to go fishing.
I made a couple of small mistakes on the siphon. It did not come on by itself. In fact, it was vapor locked and would not let any water through at all. I had to bleed the air pressure off of it before it would start. But, I know what I need to do to fix it so that it will self prime, and it won't be a hard fix.
Hello Lynyrd........... I'm curious as to what the problem with the siphon was. Was the high point vent clogged, or was the vent pipe routed too deep into the pond? I'm thinking that vapor lock shouldn't occur in an open ended siphon overflow regardless of whether or not the vent is working, but after looking at your pictures I did notice the long length of riser pipe at the discharge end of the siphon. Depending on piping elevations, I'm guessing that this long length of riser might possibly create enough head pressure at the outlet so as to allow an airlock to occur at certain pool elevations, should the high point vent become clogged.............. Just a thought. Like I said, I'm curious.