Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations His and Hers ponds

Hi all.

My girlfriend and I recently moved to the SW corner of Georgia. Together we got a nice piece of rural property and we're planning for two ponds. We also building two homes, but that's another story.

We're working with a local contractor who is a 2nd generation pond builder with a good reputation. He seems knowledgeable and honest. My research always leads to questions, and so far his answers have agreed with what I've read. He seems honest because he told us that the 10 acre pond (hers) that we were considering was risky because of water supply. He has convinced us that a smaller (cheaper) pond is a better choice for that site.

The other pond (mine) will be around one acre. It looks like an easier build with a fairly short dam, a high clay content, and a small but steady water supply.

My idea at this point is to maximize LMB in one pond and BG in the other. I was a little disappointed when I read that Crappie aren't practical for ponds this size.

Both sites have some nice pines and poplars to offset building costs.

The builder will be giving us bids for the projects soon and I'm trying to learn as much as possible before construction begins. I visited a lot of websites before finding Pond Boss, but I think I'll make this my base for pond info. I'm going to subscribe to PB magazine after posting this. Any comments/advice will be appreciated. I will be reading through old threads in the mean time.

Thanks, Damn Yankee (Jerry)

Welcome Jerry.

Good to hear that the natives are friendly. Uh, don't mention voting to them for awhile. And, don't ever, ever, say "The way we did it up North".

One of the little things that I like about a good contractor, is when they offer a better way to do something that will actually cause them to make less money. By recomending you build a smaller pond, he's not going to make as much money off of you, but in the end, he'll get more work because he did it right. Too many out there will try to get as much money out of you as possible and build something that they know is wrong, wont last or doesn't have a chance of suceeding. Then when it doesn't work out, they blame the person who hired them.

Good luck with your ponds and keep us posted. Nothing as exiting as a new pond being built!!!

Eddie

Jerry, you are obviously a very fine & upstanding man to make the "hers" pond be the 10 acre one while you claim the 1 acre pond.

Either that, or you have a hidden agenda, as we all do, that the "hers" pond is actually "ours."

Dave: You are wise.

eddie: Not only will the pond man make less, but so will his cousin who will be harvesting the timber.

Sunil: I'm not necessarily that good. My portion of the property is 2 acres. Still, the ponds will be "ours" for all practical purposes. She is wise enough to follow my advice most of the time. Oddly, she doesn't care about fish?!, so I'll be stocking and maintaining "hers".

When you said "his and her" ponds I thought you were going to talk about something similar to my back two back ponds that are side by side. One day I looked out the window and a male mallard was swimming in one and the female was swimming in the other. It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen! I guess ducks have little spats to eh?

My wife and I have kidded each other that the front pond is a "gay pond." Reason being is I've see two male mallard ducks more often in that pond than a pair of male and female ducks!

Jerry welcome to PB. I would suggest that you get the new PB book Perfect Pond as it is loaded with good info on starting a pond from looking for land through construction to completion.

Thanks ewest.

I can't find how to order Perfect Ponds. Can someone direct me?

Call the PB office at 800-687-6075 or see the link at the bottom of this page "Pond Boss".

I don't see a link for that particular book. I'll call the PB office to order my copy, but you might want to make the process more idiot proof.

(might need more coffee...........)

It is a brand new book and not on the web page yet. The link has the phone # in case I gave the wrong one. Just call the office.

Tell them the NICE moderator sent you.

Oops. Too late.

Here's some info for anyone who's curious:

*The light blue lines are the main creek and the two branches we hope to use for our ponds.

*Thin green lines are natural bodies of water and very thick blue lines are the man-made ponds of our neighbors.

*The orange lines are the proposed pond sites.

*The yellow lines are the dams.

*The black is the driveway to Cindy's house.

*The pink dot is Cindy's house.

*The yellow dot by the small pond is where I will build my place.

Our pond guy wants to meet soon to clarify what my girl and I want so he can work up the bids. So far he has shot some elevations and taken soil samples.

I've read several threads, the latest copy of PB mag, and Perfect Pond. Below I'm going to outline how I picture the ponds at this time. I'm sure the plan will evolve as the project goes forward.

Cindy's Pond: This will be the larger pond at approximately 4 or 5 acres. Under normal conditions there are several small streams from ground water to feed the pond. We're experiencing drought conditions like many others and the streams have dried up. Average rainfall here is almost 60 inches/year. The water shed is about 80 - 90 acres. About 60 of that is pasture, 10 wooded and 10 acres planted with cotton or peanuts.

The pond site is totally wooded with a mix of slash pines, tulip poplar, elms, many magnolias, and various oaks.

The soil is somewhat lacking in clay, but the pond man plans on harvesting clay from the nearby field which is about 500 feet away.

Cindy wants a pond for the diversity and beauty. I like fish.

We're considering a shallow area where the stream enters the pond. At this end I would like to see trees very close to the bank. Without rimming or digging there, we would have a gradual drop reaching 3 foot deep. This would be in the upstream corner of the triangular pond and would create a shallow zone roughly 100 feet on it's three sides. We understand that when the level drops this area will dry up. This doesn't bother us esthetically if it's not a problem for some other reason.

The pond is surrounded by trees that are up to 90 feet tall. I'm thinking about clearing 50 - 75 feet up the banks. I'm still trying to decide about the whole shade vs leaf litter thing. What if I leave all of the pines after 50 feet and clear hardwoods back up to 100 ft? Several of the pines are 2 1/2 feet in diameter.

I'm not sure what's possible WRT depth at this time.

We would like to utilize the dam for a road back into the woods.

I would like to use a pvc siphon as the primary spillway . The pond guy just replaced the old standpipe on his own pond with a siphon system.

I'm still trying to decide what type of fish to stock. I'm open to some experimentation with less usual species for the two ponds. I'm a life long BG lover, but could live without them. HSB sound great, but it seems a more expensive way to go which is an issue for me.

Back to the research...................

Jerry's pond: This is the smaller of the two proposed ponds which will be on the two acres that I own.

To amend my original post, the branch that will supply this pond isn't "steady". After no rain for over 2 months it has dried up. In normal weather it would run constantly. It was usually just a trickle only a couple inches deep and maybe a foot wide. The watershed for this pond is about 25 acres made up mostly of pasture.

Much of that watershed is on the neighbors land and most of that flows into his 1/10 acre pond before draining onto my land. At this time his pond is about 5 feet below full. I think he has a leak because it was full at the beginning of the year. After the water leaves his pond it flows about 1000 feet before reaching my site.

There is good clay at this site and a 100 foot dam would probably get me close to a 1 acre pond. I believe the average depth won't be much more than 6 feet. I'm wondering if it might not be better to go with something smaller, like 1/2 acre. Would any of you chose a smaller pond over larger?

This site is also wooded, but seems to be a little wetter than Cindy's pond site. There are fewer pines, several large poplars and numerous water tupelo (black gum). I wanted to incorporate some of the water tupelos but I read that they can't tolerate a ph over 6.

I'm wide open to alternative species for this pond. Good eating is desirable (too bad about crappie).

Thinking siphon system here too.

I'll probably put my (tiny) house very close to the pond, maybe with a deck/dock. How 'bout a screened deck with a trap door for fishing? I'm serious....kind of.

DY are you planning on a excavated pond or a embankment pond or combo of the 2? Reason I'm asking is based on the topo you have shown I would put the dam running north and south to the left edge of the property and tie the two high spots together. It appears you have a 10 ft deep natural bowl. The pond would be much bigger than 4 or 5 acres if your pond drawing is close to scale. If you are going excavate 4 or 5 acres of land like you have it drawn your talking big bucks. Keep us posted, looks like a real nice piece of property.

Thanks for catching that RT. Here's a more better map:

DY Based on the topo if you were too build the Dam across both draws instead of the one as you have drawn I roughly scaled the screen and a straight dam across the 2 draws would be about 600 ft long assuming you dam up 5 ft of water. With a 10 ft high crest 10 ft wide with 4/1 slopes you are looking at about 20,000 yds of dirt not including a core. The surface of the pond would be around 6.5 to 7 acres. You would loose alot more trees thou. Good luck on your project.

Thanks again for taking the time to look RT. What you can't tell from the topo is that the branch that runs east to west makes up the property line. Also the pond man we're working with is concerned that there wouldn't be enough water to maintain more than around 4 acres during dry spells. I suppose that has to do with not being able to access that particular branch.