Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? Doing some work to my pond and looking for advice

Picture of the pond currently 4 1/2 to 5 feet low right now. Can see the difference in how much water is in the fingers vs the pictures when I was draining the pond.

It is going be a nice pond when it is full

Great work! That looks very nice.

Thanks for giving us the update. I went back through the thread again to refresh my memory.

It is amazing how pictures can be so deceiving. The part of the thread describing the 7.5' depth at the red dot really did not look that deep at all in the picture.

Going to be really nice when full. Looks like the contractor did a nice job of cleaning up and grading.

I agree snrub, for whatever reason the pictures do not give a good sense of depth at all. Be it because the pictures were all taken with my cell phone or what the reason is I am not sure. But the measurement I gave back then is accurate as it was shot with a transit.

Yeah it will be a nice pond when all is said and done. believe it or not all the grading you see was done with a track hoe and a dozer. With that said once I get some dry weather I have a lot of work to do with the my tractor moving some dirt around here and there and disking everything down before I can seed it.

The pond is actually up another 8-10" now since that picture as well, we recieved over an 1 1/2" of rain over Tuesday and Wednesday nights. I actually wish it would slow down a little as I would have liked to got some rock in the back corner to use as a boat ramp, get some structure built and installed, and build a dock before it is full but that isnt looking to likely at this point.

Sweet....ready for fishies!!

Well time for another update the last couple days were pretty eventful for my little pond. No pictures as everyone else was working but on wed. I picked up 750 BG, 100 or so RES, 100 BG/RES hybrids, and 10 lbs of minnows. At the time the pond was somewhere around 3 feet low. That evening we had 7/8" or rain come thru followed by another 1 5/8" overnight into thursday

When I woke up Thursday morning.


Pond came up 2 foot or so from those events. This was last night around 6pm still a foot or so low.


Then 1/2 an hour later this rolled in...


The aftermath, another 1 3/4 in less than an hour


This morning before I left for work, pond is over flowing probably 2 to 3 inches out the overflow if I had to guess. Didnt have time to walk over there.


So here is my next question the fish were released on the shallow point between the two fingers on the North end (right in the panoramic pictures) the over flow is in the south west corner(far corner on the left in pictures) what are the odds of the majority of my new fish being flushed out of the pond?

Some will go. They'll be throughout the pond in no time. I see a few fish in the pools downstream of the overflow after the big outflow events. Have a net to grab some if I feel like it. I've drug out anything from 1-5" fish from the pools downstream. Off they go when I dump the bucket back in the pond.

Yeah that really isnt an option on mine. They go down the spill way into a drainage ditch across my property that has two ponds and about 50 acres of field draining thru it.

Bridge I built across it last summer while it was dry 20 foot span.

My pools started off as a runoff as well. The natural "branch" as small intermittent streams are called here. I dug several holes and stacked up some rocks downstream of each. Now I have pools for a good while after every overflow period. Serves two purposes. One to drop out sediment from pond but also the rest of the hillside above- which means I dig them back out when they fill in. The other is to create some water features to enjoy! I get the gurgle as it flows down, critters come to it and do their own fishing (coon & possum tracks are common in the mud), and I can rescue my fish before they hit the bigger creek.

Great looking bridge! Did you buy the under-structure or fab?

Thanks!

I fabbed it from two old bar joists that my dad picked up off a jobsite 4 or 5 years ago. These things are amazingly strong for there weight if you put in cross bracing to tie them together and keep them from deflecting.
In the shed squaring them all up before tacking in the first braces.


ready to go to the ditch

Quick pic while watering the grass seed last night. Ground has a green tint to it this morning for the first time. So all is going well as long as the neighbor and I can keep dedicating a couple hours a night to watering.

Very picturesque setting....nice work! Love the bridge also!

Figured i should try to keep this thread up to date as much as possible. Two weeks ago today Rex (Rainman) dropped off my texas hunter feeder, optimal bluegill feed, and 50 8-10" LMB and this past saturday I stocked 33 Albino CC and 1lb of golden shiners.

I need to take a video of the feeder in action now. Its amazing how quickly the BG have taken to it the water in front of it just has constant action for 15-20 minutes before the feeder goes off and you can see them staging up waiting for the blower to kick on. Also with the warmer weather the pond has really come to life in the last two weeks. Minnows are present by the thousands in the shallows and constant BG swimming around in a foot to two of water. At least one of the bass has figured out that the feeder is a double dinner bell and picks off minnows as they venture into deeper water to get feed. I am also hoping the CC will start feeding in the near future.

Love the bridge build pictures. What did you paint the bridge with? what product?

It is just good old rattle can rustoleum enamel spray paint in gloss black. It is on my list of things to do this summer to touch up paint underneath and seal all the wood on it. Not sure how I am going to power wash it before hand though...

I hear chassis saver is pretty good paint. It must be good as there is no solvent known to man that will take it off your skin. You might as well just take an orbital sander and sand it off up front since you pretty much need a new layer of skin before the overspray comes off your body.

I'm sure there are other very good sealing paints in black that will weather the elements.

As per other discussions recently, how well you prep the metal before hand is very important. If you can't get to it very well to sand or powerwash, then a brushing with a wire brush to get most of the old off and then recoating with black undercoating or bed liner might be the best. That is pretty easy to touch up with a rattle can as it needs it down the road.

If there were areas that I couldn't hit and had some rust, I would hit those areas with a rust converter first.

I recently did a project with Por-15. Metal Prep., then the sealer/preventative coating then another enamel paint for a top coat. http://www.por15.com/

FYI, even if you are brushing it on, doing it in an enclosed area isn't the wisest thing to do without the proper breathing equipment.

POR15 is the same way, the underside of my camaro is coated with it and you have to let it wear off when it gets on you, there is no washing it off no matter how fast you try to get it off...

The only reason I didnt go that route on the bridge was I didnt have any on hand and it was built and installed over a 3 day weekend and that it requires topcoating to protect it from uv rays.

I have used POR 15 on every one of my classic car restorations and it is the MOST TOXIC thing I have ever sprayed!! It is great stuff though and will be there a lifetime. Left some to dry in a cup once and actually had a difficult time trying to DRILL through it just for fun to see how tough it was!!

I did some research on rust inhibitors as I had a project I wanted to really dial in. I went with 3X Encapsulator over POR-15. 3X has 77% solids over POR's 71%.

http://www.dlistl.com/Encapsulator.cfm

What does Reese, HiddenHitch, Curt, etc use to coat their hitches prior to installation to your vehicle?

Finally got a few pictures of the fish feeding the other day, I happened to be around the house and looked at my watch just before the 2 p.m. feeding so I walked down to watch. The BG were already on standby when when I got down there.


Minnows come out of the woodwork as soon as the feeder goes, I am guessing they are feeding on a fine powder that comes off the food as its thrown.


Short video of them, I have a few of my lmb are starting to take feed that I have seen but none of the albinos that were stocked two weeks ago have made an appearance yet.

[img]http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d34/BLUE72CAMARO/pond/th_20160430_163028_zpsat2sjoxr.mp4[/img]

quick update on the fishes in the pond. I personally havent had time to fish but a one of my buddies wife was fishing a little bit on Saturday while we were getting things set up for my annual bonfire I have every year. The bluegill that I saw are very healthy and in the 6-7" length now and were over an inch thick. Then she caught three of these and all three looked identical. Thats my dad holding the fish as he was unhooking them for her since she wouldnt touch them! LOL


I was shocked as these were 10-12" bass when Rainman put them in for me this spring and all 50 of them fit easily in a 5 gallon bucket!

I didnt get measurements on them but I am guessing that these fish are 16-18 or so inches long and were probably 3" thick or more in the belly.

I know, I know, I need to buy a scale and measuring board to have on hand.

All that forage you had, and your TH feeder with Optimal is really paying off! Looking great!