Worked on the dock a few more hours this weekend. All I have left is the walkway. It is 12x16. I used 5x5 treated posts. 2x8 treated for the joists and 2x6 treated for the decking. It has 10 posts and 3 beams supporting it. It is very solid. Looking forward to many evenings sitting on it.
We have really been working hard lately. Still need to put up my rope railing around the dock walkway. I have been digging holes and concreting in hedge posts and tree tops to add some vertical structure. The recent rains have been really nice. I am still acting like a kid in a candy store. Youth Turkey Season starts this weekend so we hope to have some pictures for you next week! Have a great weekend.
ToddM, it will be a few years on the house. Wished it could be sooner. I keep telling everyone that I had my priorities straight....Pond Before The House!
We had our little pond treated with rotenone earlier in the week. I was shocked to see about 6 bass in the 2lb range, many green sunfish, blue gill and some big shiners. We wanted to make sure that we are starting from scratch. Sprayed the new pond too just to make sure we didn't have any run off into it. My two boys and I hated to see it happen but I guess it had to happen. Hate to see them go to waste. If we had known that there were so many pan sized fish we would have tried to catch them to eat during one of our camping trips!
Make sure your tire structure has numerous holes drilled in all the tires so air and later pond gasses can escape and/or are tied down very well. I would drill at least some holes even if the tires are tied down.
I drilled holes and weighted the tires with rocks inside and still had one that floated to shore and had to re-sink.
A person wants all the voids to be filled with water, not pond gasses, so the fish and pond critters can utilize the space.
One addition to our pond I like was adding some permanent moorings for our small boat. We get lots of wind, so our pontoon paddle boat would blow around a lot when we fished from it. Tried a couple different anchors but they would hang up on my different tree stumps, concrete cribs and tree limb fish structures. Finally went scuba diving and tied off a number of mooring ropes with small floats attached to my large concrete structures. The small floats are unobtrusive yet mark some of the structures for fishing reference from the bank and now we can easily boat up to them and tie off the boat. Based on the wind direction and letting out different lengths of rope, we can position the boat on about any part of the pond we want to fish. Earth anchors in the pond bottom would work also. Just a thought.
snrub, we have drilled several holes already in the tires, hopefully enough. The anchors sound like a cool idea. In between fishing tournaments this weekend I made a trip to the pond and was surprised to see a few 2lb catfish floating from the rotinone. I had no idea that they were in there. They may have been bull heads. Hopefully we will be able to start stocking by the end of next week.
We had a busy weekend at the pond. Planted some apple, pear and peach trees. The deer are going to love us. Picked up some corn seed for planting some food plots. We also took the plunge and bought a new tractor. I picked up a 4x4 Massey Ferguson 1739E with Hydro and a skid steer quick attach loader. I also bought a Rhino 72" rotary mower and a Rhino 66" tiller. It will be nice to be able to use my own equipment and not try to beg and borrow all of the time. Hopefully I will like it fine. They seem to be well liked. Fathead minnow, blue gill and sunfish are coming next week. Will add more pics when I can.
Our water came up 3-4' over the weekend. We are hoping for a few more good rains in the near future. Things are changing quickly. We will be putting in fish this week.
We bit the bullet and finally purchased a tractor. This is the first tractor that I have ever owned. It is a 1739 4x4 Massey Ferguson with a quick attach front loader. We also bought a 72" rhino rotary mower and a 65" rhino rotary tiller. I plan to use the tiller for my food plots. My wife was learning how to drive it, pretty easy being a hydrostat. Slowly making our dream a reality. Just wished the house was coming sooner than later.
"Forget pounds and ounces, I'm figuring displacement!"
If we accept that: MBG(+)FGSF(=)HBG(F1) And we surmise that: BG(>)HBG(F1) while GSF(<)HBG(F1) Would it hold true that: HBG(F1)(+)AM500(x)q.d.(=)1.5lbGRWT? PB answer: It depends.
Our fish showed up on time. Everything looked pretty healthy. With the help of my wife and boys and a gentleman from the local hatchery we started our life cycle of our pond. Blue Gill, Red Ear Sunfish and Fathead Minnows. It was great to see some fish in our water. Immediately we had some snapping turtles come in to feed. They were pretty aggressive.
More rain equals more water in the pond. I have bags of corn, soybeans, milo and sunflower seed that I can't get planted because of all of the rain. But I like seeing the pond level climbing. The new fish love hanging around the structure that I planted. I placed a few large 14-16' cedars 1/2 in the water yesterday, no pics of them yet. We also placed our gravel for our little boat ramp yesterday as well. Things are really starting to happen quick now. Looks like next week I can plant my food plots. Corn will be a little late this year but I doubt the deer will mind.
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