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Joined: Mar 2005
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You gotta go to bolucky or bofortunate or maybe nice guys do finish.
Nice story and like everybody else, I am awaiting the next chapter.
1/4 & 3/4 acre ponds. A thousand miles from no where and there is no place I want to be... Dwight Yoakam
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It's not about the fish. It's about the pond. Take care of the pond and the fish will be fine. PB subscriber since before it was in color.
Without a sense of urgency, Nothing ever gets done.
Boy, if I say "sic em", you'd better look for something to bite. Sam Shelley Rancher and Farmer Muleshoe Texas 1892-1985 RIP
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Nice people do finish first and get the reward they deserve at the appointed time. They also enjoy a different type of reward along the way - the smiles of happy people and the feeling of I made a difference. The surprise is just how many times over the gift is reciprocated to the giver and others along the way. Proof -- see Bob's last 4 sentences. Nice touch Bob !!
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bobad, Great story. I look forward to meeting you at the PB conference – I want to shake your hand. Coffee’s on me. I truly believe in prayers being answered. George Glazener
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Bob,
Great story!!! Nice to finally read all the details and see what it took to make happen. From your previous posts, and knowing what equipment you had there, I always figured "you" were the excentric millionare. LOL
Now it's turned out that you're just a nice guy and life has paid you back. Congratulations.
Eddie
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Eric, Dave, Rad, Thank you! Hey Eddie, Thanks for the kind words. I always thought it was better to be rich than nice. Now I'll have to re-think that. Nah, rich. George, If my prayers were answered, I think they were answered on behalf of my wife. If anyone deserves a break, it's her. She works a 9-5 job and has still been right by my side through the whole ordeal. She has become a pretty decent hand at using a front end loader. Now, she smiles and asks me "When are we going fishing?". I forgot to mention that my next installment will be 'An Unusual Pond Design'" I hope it confuses you guys as much as it does me.
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I don't know about anyone else, but I got a little "misty". Great story!!!
Just do it...
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Originally posted by rmedgar: I don't know about anyone else, but I got a little "misty". Me too. He's really a sweet old guy. He's donating lots of money to charities since he retired. He's driven chevy pickup trucks all his life. His son convinced him to treat himself to an Escalade. He loves it and grins from ear to ear when riding in it. We enjoy watching him enjoying himself. I drove it to the next town for him and dropped it off at the dealer for servicing. That's 1 payback down, 999,999,999 to go!
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An "Unusual" Pond Design
One benefit of taking the slow, hard route to building a pond is that you have plenty of time for planning. My pond has a few unusual features, in my experience anyway. It's really a 1.5a pond (I will refer to it as "the pond") within a 10a pond (I will refer to it as "the land"). The land slopes very gently toward the pond, to avoid wasting a drop of water. Much of my neighbor's land to the West also drains into my property. I guess there's at least 6-8 acres there, but I can't tell exactly how much of it drains into my land.
The land is surrounded by a by an old 16" high levee, and I built a small spillway that is 5-6" lower than the rest of the levee. Of course I had to lay an inlet pipe underneath the pond levee to collect the runoff. I wanted 12" PVC pipe, but found some used 10" for $1 a foot. I buried 40' of it under the levee at the very lowest spot on the land... the collection point for all the runoff. Now, how do I keep trash fish out when it floods? I needed a "fish filter" of some kind. I solved this by digging a 4' diameter, 4' deep sump hole at the end of the 10" inlet pipe. I plastered the walls and bottom of the sump hole with brick mortar to prevent it from washing out. I placed a plastic drum, which was cut in half, down in the sump. I had already cut a 10" hole into the half-drum to accept the 10" pipe. I drilled 100's of 3/4" holes into the plastic drum for the water to flow into the 10" pipe. Then I filled the sump hole with limestone gravel, completely covering the drum to a depth of about a foot. The pond's "full mark" is flush with the original grade of the land, as with any normal dug pond. When the pond is full, runoff water will no longer run into it. In fact, it could possibly even flow backward. No problem, the fish are blocked from escaping by the gravel filter. The effect of all the above is that my ponds has a spillway, but it's over 200' from the pond. Since the pond's "full mark" is at my land's original grade, and my land is surrounded by a levee, how do I prevent the land from always being flooded? My solution was to run a small pipe under the spillway at the land's original grade. I used a 4" PVC pipe, which is intentionally too small to drain the land quickly.
When the pond is full, all the runoff exits over the spillway or under it, through the little 4" pipe. If the pond needs water, I simply put a stopper into the 4" pipe. When the pond is full, the stopper is removed, so the land will drain quickly. I also have a provision for "over filling" the pond. I simply put a big stopper into the pond side of the 10" inlet pipe. If I get huge rains, I could theoretically fill the pond up to the top of the 16" pond levee. Whether or not I will allow it to fill that much is still undecided. My "stoppers" will be replaced with float operated valves some day, so everything will work automatically, more or less.
As mentioned earlier, there is a relatively deep gully running along the East side of my pond. In the event of a severe dry spell, I can pump water from it into my pond. As I mentioned, any sizable rain causes the gully to flow for 2 days or more. I know that pumping from a gully sounds like a risky practice, but there are 2 safeguards. The first safeguard is distance. The pumped water would have to flow nearly 1000 feet over a very shallow, grassy road before entering the pond. I intend to spread 3 or 4" of sand in the roadbed as funds become available, further filtering the emergency water. The gully water would finally enter the pond through the aforementioned limestone gravel bed. Since the gully completely dries up in 2 or 3 weeks during the summer, I don't think there will be any unwanted fish eggs to worry about. Even if I did pick up a few fish eggs, I think it's highly unlikely that they could make it through that gauntlet.
Next Installemnt, "Fill 'er Up!"
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Bob – Your “Pond Chronicles” are very nicely done. I can see that you put a lot of thought into your pond as well as documenting everything to share here.
I hope “Badger Badger Badger” hasn’t gotten the best of you!
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Originally posted by Dwight: I hope “Badger Badger Badger” hasn’t gotten the best of you! It was devastating. It turned my brain to mush. Or maybe it was that "Theatre of the Absurd" thread.
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Fill 'er Up!
I finished the pond on or about Dec 16th, 2006. Shortly thereafter, the rains came. And I do mean rain! Of course I was right out in the rain, checking to see whether my ditches and pipes, and the overall scheme, were accurate and working. Among my worries were, how much would the limestone gravel filter bed slow down the inflow? Would it waste water? Since I didn't have a real anti-seep collar, would the trench for the 10" pipe leak or wash out? Would the land flood and wash out my perimeter levees? Was everything sloped true, or would there be huge water puddles on the land?
My next visit to the completed pond was just after a fast 4" rain. The land was flooded pretty badly. A quick look revealed that all my features were overwhelmed, yet functioning. I waded into ankle-deep water to have a look at the filter bed. The filter bed was totally submerged in the muddy water, and there was a 2' diameter whirlpool of water above it. I can't tell you how exciting it was to see the water sucking down into the filter bed. It was working ! I could hear the sound of water rushing into the pond, so I slogged my way across the levee to see it close up. The inlet pipe was absolutely gushing muddy water. The pond had over a foot of water in it, and looked absolutely horrible, just as I expected. It was beautiful!
I walked 100 yards to the land's little "spillway", where the runoff water had topped it. I uncorked the 4" pipe to help relieve some of the water flowing over the spillway, and help prevent it from washing out any worse. After an hour of watching and doing some minor shovel work, the water had subsided below the top of the spillway. I re-corked the 4" pipe so the pond would get all of the remaining runoff. During the 90 minutes I worked in the drizzle, the pond had risen another foot. The 10" pipe moved more water than I thought. I returned the next day, and the pond had about 3' of water. A nice little stream of water was still flowing into the gravel filter, which was not even slowing it down. With a few minor adjustments to the spillway height, everything was working as planned. I was delighted, and all the work now seemed more than worth it.
Subsequent heavy rains filled the pond to the "full" mark by late January. I removed the cork from the 4" pipe, and corked the 10" pipe on the pond side. More rains filled the pond an inch or 2 over full, which is good insurance against a dry spell. By now the pond water had settled down from "soupy" to a more normal looking "muddy". I'm encouraged that it will clear up some day. I have added 500# of lime, 200# of gypsum, 16# of alum, and a gallon of sulphuric acid. So far, there are no signs of clearing. My nursery lady has more alum on order. I will slowly add alum just until I notice a very slight clearing, then stop to avoid an unnecessary Ph drop. My theory is that if you add enough alum to cause overnight clearing, that you have added a lot more alum than necessary. I will allow the last bit of clearing to occur naturally, or not at all. I will add more lime as I can afford it, if necessary.
Next installment: "My Goals"
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Originally posted by bobad: Fill 'er Up!
...........The inlet pipe was absolutely gushing muddy water. The pond had over a foot of water in it, and looked absolutely horrible, just as I expected. It was beautiful! ............. a quote for the ages.........boy, i was away from checkin in for a couple days and did your story ever blossom......great stuff bobad, what an amazing thing to have stumbled into a benefactor, that was really neat!
GSF are people too!
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My Goals Are simple really: To have a productive pond, with decent size fish that can be fished year around. My approach will be to try and reproduce the conditions of the better ponds and lakes I have fished over the years. I have noticed a few common denominators. Among the most important appears to be plentiful and diverse prey species. The liveliest ponds I have fished seemed to have at least some shallows, and plenty of cover for the minnows, mollusks, tadpoles, and insects. I'm hoping for 20-25% weeds and grass, and have built shallow areas for them to take hold. I guess it will be a fine balancing act between having enough cover and too much cover for the prey species. My goal is also to have a "low maintenance" pond. I am hoping that I will not need to aerate, fertilize, feed, or re-stock. Of course I will do so if absolutely necessary, if only on a temporary basis. Fishing wise, healthy pan fish are my main goal. I will sacrifice a bit of quantity for quality. I will doubtless need to be bass-heavy to control the BCrappie, and will catch and release all the biggest ones if necessary. It's possible that I may wind up with a few trophy sized bass, and an occasional big RES, but probably nothing else above average. It will certainly be interesting to observe, learn, and see what develops. If something gets out of balance, I will try to re-balance it with corrective fishing. Of course the over riding goal is to have a nice place to fish and relax. When the fish aren't biting, it gives a person more time to think and relax, and simply enjoy the country. So, the pond will be a retreat as well as a fishing hole. I am learning from others on the Pond Boss forum that ponds quickly become a hobby. I am trying to avoid that, but I am hearing that resistance is futile. Next installment: "Fish In!" And that's the end, I promise!
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Ambassador Field Correspondent Lunker
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Originally posted by bobad: Of course the over riding goal is to have a nice place to fish and relax. When the fish aren't biting, it gives a person more time to think and relax, and simply enjoy the country. So, the pond will be a retreat as well as a fishing hole. I am learning from others on the Pond Boss forum that ponds quickly become a hobby. I am trying to avoid that, but I am hearing that resistance is futile. Wow, my internet was down for several days and an entire epic saga has been posted. Bobad you truly have a way with words. After I got my internet back on line (bad cable modem that took a while to diagnose) I found your posts and read them from the beginning. With your relaxing, friendly writing style I felt like I was right there with you. I believe that your goals for the pond are the same as most everyone here. Every time I am able to go to my property I am stunned by several things. First I easily forget how beautiful and serene nature can be, the sound of the trees wispering in the wind, the smell of wet spring grass, watching a duck glide to rest on the waters surface. Second I am reminded how this environment seems to magically remove the stress of a city environment. No boom boxes with angry voices shouting "gansta rap" (a constant problem in So Cal), escape from high density housing, traffic and of course crime. Give me my kayak, a fishing pole and an hour or two and the worlds troubles seem to melt away. Well except of course that I worry that my LMB aren't getting enough to eat. And I worry that enough of my newly stocked blue gill will get big enough to breed. And I worry that DIED will catch a bigger GSF than me and knock me off the record board. But those types of worries I can handle. Originally posted by bobad:
And that's the end, I promise! I hope not, Bobad, I truly hope not. Write on, my friend, write on.
JHAP ~~~~~~~~~~ "My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives." ...Hedley Lamarr (that's Hedley not Hedy)
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Wow Bobad...awesome story. Finding a "sugar daddy" like that really helped you out. Seems it also helped him out immensely, and gave you guys a new friend for life. Congratulations and good luck...that site will provide you with enjoyment as long as you go there...
In a lifetime, the average driver will honk 15,250 times. My wife figures I'm due to die any day now...
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Bob,
Great story, but where's the pictures????
Please, please, please post some pictures!!!!
Eddie
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Outstanding delivery, Bobad! What a great story, as told by the master.
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bobad, nice post ! I wouldn't worry about the muddy water, it took 6 months for mine to settle out after it was built and good rain fell. I bought alum, tossed in 50 lbs...and stacked 300 lbs in a minor runoff area to wash in when the big rains occur. I have about a 100 foot drop in elevation, and the water comes in pretty fast with a big one. That was 2 years ago, and I still have about 3/4 the alum remaining on the ground...pond water looks good. Once you have several good rains and grass covers all the exposed dirt from the dozer/trucks, you will be fine !
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I wouldn't worry about the muddy water, it took 6 months for mine to settle out after it was built and good rain fell. I bought alum, tossed in 50 lbs...and stacked 300 lbs in a minor runoff area to wash in when the big rains occur. Thanks for the encouagement. I'm not in a big hurry to get it cleared up, but I would like it to be partially cleared by the time the bream start to spawn. That probably won't be until mid to late summer.
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Fish In! The big event happened on March 3rd 2007. I made a 50 mile trip to the little community of Maurice to pick up my fish order. Chris, the hatchery owner, was not in the office, so I looked around. There were ~250gal tanks brimming with fish, and I could have watched them all day. It was better than TV. It's funny how swimming fish can mesmerize people. I think it brings out deep-seated instincts in us. The hatchery grounds were pretty impressive. In addition to the fish breeding ponds, there was a "lunker bass" pond for club members to fish. I bet there were some huge bass in that pond, because it was catch and release only. Chris showed up, and loaded up my bags of fish. For my initial stocking, I ordered 600 BG, 200 RES, and 5# of FHM. The counts looked to be very generous. He even mentioned that the RES count was 250 at the very least. He told me that he slipped a few CBNG into the mix, and wanted to know if that was OK. I told him I appreciated it, and it should be interesting. I don't think there is any down side to a BGXCBNG mix, but hope someone will let me know if there is. I also noticed at least 1 big fat bullfrog tadpole among the mayhem in the bags of bream. I was in a hurry to get them home to keep the stress low, so I kept the rest of the visit short. As I released the fish into the pond, I noted the BG sizes varied widely. There were perhaps a dozen 5 inchers, 2-3 doz. 4 inchers, perhaps 100 3 inchers, and the rest were 1-2". The RES were much more uniform, and ran very small at about an inch. The FHM were 99% fully grown, and quite fat. The bream were obviously in great condition, and lively. However, they weren't as plump as I would have liked them to be. I saw 3 floater bream and 2-3 woozy ones. The floaters had body damage, so they may have been pinched while being handled. I saw 2 more floater FHM in the next 3-4 days. So I think I was lucky, all things considered. In addition to the 5# of FHM, I have been adding gambusia (G. affinis) from my gully since early January of 2007. I would usually catch 25-50 at a time, but some days I could only catch 10. Since my dip net has a fairly coarse mesh, most of my catch was large pregnant females. At last count I have stocked 420, and they are breeding and thriving. I am seeing way too many 1" gams for them to be the ones I caught, so I suspect they were hatched in my pond over a month ago. I will be stocking LMB and Bcrappie in early June, and I hope by then I will have a bumper crop of gambusia and FHM. 1 week after stocking, I took a hasty dip net survey at points all around the pond. I netted about 50 gambusia, 2 dozen 1/2" crawfish, a dozen bream, and 2 FHM So they have distributed themselves well. I did stock all the fish into 1 area. Addendum: On March 15th, I went to a friend's lake and dip netted a few ghost shrimp. There were millions of them, but there were too many sticks and roots to use the dip net efficiently. After 3 hours of hard work, I brought home only ~150 shrimp. They ran from 3/4" long to the fully mature size of nearly 2". On the positive side, most of the larger ones were carrying eggs, so there should be plenty of them by the time I stock bass and crappie in early June. As far as I know, there is no downside to ghost shrimp, providing you have cover for them. I think they are vastly under rated as a secondary forage species. I also picked up about 200 gambusia and few dozen other critters, including spring peepers and dragonfly nymphs. The stocked gambusia count is now around 600, and that's all I need. I wish I had another 1000 ghost shrimp, but catching them is too much like work! Addendum #2: Another dip net survey taken March 18 revealed that my bream have the "big head thin body look of death" syndrome. I ran to Wal-Mart and grabbed 10# of 33% protein food and fed heavily every day so far. I will continue to do so as long as they look puny. =-=-=-=-=- Building a pond the hard way was, well, hard. Please don't try this at home unless you are totally obsessed. But who knows, you may get lucky! It's been fun. Thanks for all the questions and nice comments. Spring peeper... a tiny, lively little frog. Grass or ghost shrimp. Great forage, great bait. Picture credits: NOAA
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Great story and great writing, really enjoyed it. Thanks for sharing!
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