Howdy boys. I'm in the research phase of getting a pond project going, just wanted to say hello and get a thread started for questions that will pop up as this progresses. I've got a 25 acre place in central texas about 30 miles south of Austin. Property is shaped almost like a perfect square. It's very hilly with about 100ft of elevation change on the property.
There is an area which has what amounts to a shallow pond right now, except it always runs dry. Whenever it rains water pools in this area against a natural berm in the land geography. Looking at the square shape of the property, this a little to the west and north of dead center target on the property.
It will pool up about 15-20ft wide by hundreds of feet in length depending on the rate of rain. At around the 1-2ft mark it spills over a low point in the berm that is cut out quite a bit from erosion. After rains the standing water will remain standing for maybe a few weeks to a month before completely going away.
From the pooling area it then flows into a really neat wet weather creek that winds through the property to the northeast corner. I wish a had better pics as this doesn't do justice, but essentially it looks like this. Some areas are super windy with really steep banks 8+ feet high. And there are actually multiple creeks that come from different points in the property, different hills, and then converge into the main creek in different places. The longest one (where the water pools at the head) runs for probably about a thousand feet with the curves. The bottom is very rocky like a river bottom and lots of tree stump waterfalls. I love it.
And eventually the main creek channel spills into an existing pond in the corner of the property at the lowest elevation point. And that's my reason for pointing out the multiple creeks as well. This pond is receiving water from multiple sources, not just the water pooling at the head of the main channel.
It's a very swampy kind of shallow pond. About 120ft in diameter, and when completely full about 6ft water depth in the middle with probably an average depth of 4ft everywhere else. I swam in there with the snakes and frogs to figure out how deep it is
Since 2013 I've never seen the pond dry. I wouldn't mind expanding this pond a little though, or maybe just digging it out deeper. I like the sort of wildlife it attracts right now, but just a little more water would be cool...
At any rate, this pond fills up and then itself overflows in several places and the overflow runs onto my neighbors property into a large 20+ acre lake. That lake is maybe 200ft from my property line. And then that lake is a soil conservation reservoir, which itself flows into an overflow that goes downstream to other ponds, etc.
So what I'm wanting to do is build a 1-1.5 acre pond in the middle of my property at the head of the creek where water currently pools up. What I generally have in mind is to preserve the current berm and spillover into the creek, but dig this area out in a southward direction, so the existing pool/spill point would become the northern border/tip of the new pond.
Anybody have any tips or suggestions for me?
I'm trying to do this smart and currently in the early stages of consulting with NRCS about properly calculating the watershed and having a pond designed. I have provided them info but no response so far. Do any of you guys have much experience working with NRCS?
A friend of mine in the area has told me that it's important to dig the pond deep (15-20ft) to prevent evaporation and maintain water levels. I've been running searches online to get some information about this from a technical perspective but haven't really found anything. All I've come across is discussions of the importance of depth to sustain different species of fish. Some vague talk about how deeper is better for evaporation but nothing really specific getting into the numbers or heat transfer/thermodynamics of the problem. Does anybody know about anything like that?
Regarding stocking, the best resource I've found so far is the following TAMU publication.
http://fisheries.tamu.edu/files/2013/10/...mendations-.pdfThis seems to have great info for stocking and fish management after stocking. But it's light on specifics when it comes to pond design. It talks about having "deep" water areas of 12-16 feet to help with water fluctuations to prevent fish from dying during low water periods. Is there anybody here in a similar area (central texas) that can share some wisdom with me? What are people around here doing that works?
Running the numbers, if I dug a 20ft deep pond with 3:1 grade from the shore this is looking like over 28,000 cubic yards of dirt that I'm moving. Yikes!!! Am I crazy or is that for real? I've got some other projects, like building a vehicle bridge with culverts over a low water crossing that I can use some of the dirt for, and then a lot of roadwork maybe, leveling the private road with some more dirt. But not 2800 dump trucks worth of the stuff, good grief.
For central texas area what kind of depth is ideal for a good bass pond? And one that is able to maintain reasonable water level during long dry periods, etc.?
Sorry for the long initial post
I'm not in any hurry, doing research right now, if schedule and money situation works out, maybe hoping to kick this off early next year, around February, towards the end of the winter before spring rains kick in. Maybe over the fall/winter I'll start cutting some trails so I can get the heavy equipment in there.
And that raises another question. What are people's opinions of using a large excavator vs mini/medium sized excavators? And does anybody know anybody with pond construction experience in Texas, or anywhere willing to travel here? Preferably central texas but I suppose anywhere so long as they are willing to travel to Austin area for the job. From reading other threads I'm guessing it's probably 1-2 weeks of full time work for a crew that knows what they are doing. Right now I'm 50/50 about hiring somebody to do this or just paying a buddy to help me for a couple weeks and having a go at it myself.
