Pond Boss Forums INTRO New Forum Member Introduction new to forum

Just joined this forum and you all have some great answers to diferent problems. I just bought a new home on 3 acres of land and my wife and I want ot put in a 50' x 50'(might be able to go 60' x 60') fishing pond. The soil is half dirt and half clay and holds water in a 3 ft hole I dug for about 3 hrs. I cannot go bigger than what I listed because of wooded property. I have a corn field from a farm about 150' from where I want to put the pond in and don't know if runoff from manure will hurt the pond water. Would like to stock the pond with smb and perch but is the pond big enough to do so?

Welcome fellow NY-er.

First off as a primer, get the book from this site: Perfect Pond, Want one?
Second: Do a lot of reading here, tons to learn of great advice!
Third: I believe your pond is not too small. You will need to plan ahead for cover, depth, etc.
Fourth: If you plan a diversion ditch to prevent runoff from the field reaching your pond, you should be fine. That is of course if that isn't your only source of water for filling the pond. Manure will lead to all sorts of difficulties, least of which is an algae-choked pond.
Fifth: Test holes before you dig for viable sealing clay. The holes you have dug that hold water may not be good enough. They may be only revealing the current water table which can fluctuate much more than you are willing to tolerate. A well-sealed clay-lined pond is by FAR a much more attractive option than a ground water pond.

Get the book first, go from there. Your best move has been to come here! Lots of folks here came after they had a pond dug and are trying to fix mistakes such as leaky ponds. I came here after I had my pond dug, and really wish I found it first!I would have made a few more important choices that are too late to make now.

Thanks for the info. I do have that book and have dug many ponds but the ones I have had in the past were over 3 to 5 acres. I have unlimited water supply from and undergrond spring and I can run a overflow 5" duct to a lower section of land that ins't on my property but the land owner says it's oK with him. I just didn't know if a small 1/8 pond would be large enough to hold SMB and some perch. On my other ponds I never had to feed the fish as they had unlimited minnows to live on and other insects that I would catch in a minnow trap and set them free in the ponds. I figure if I can get enough small perch to feed the SMB I should be OK>

Is the spring water cool enough to raise trout? Trout are a great deal of fun.

Also you can always feed the fish regularly by hand, which is always fun. Others here have great luck with that, and in a smaller pond it may be easier to feed train fish. My fish ignore the food, so I gave up.

There are some great experts here on raising fish, I am simply repeating what I read. I believe the challenge in a small pond is maintaining balance between the top predator and its prey.

I agree on what you say on top predators and maintaining the balance. Maybe perch are not a good fish to use. The water temperature of the spring usually gets to around 60 degrees in the summer which would probably keep the water temperature of the surface around 70-73 degrees. As far as feeding by hand it's something I would have to try as I've never had to do that in larger ponds.

I dug a hole 6' deep and the top 3 was hard clay and the bottom was a mixture of both loose dirt and clay. I can squeeze the dirt in my hand and it stays together. The water stayed in the hole all day as I have a high water table underground. It stayed at the same levelfor 24 hrs. Am I to assume that I don't need a liner?

If you don't line it, the water level in the pond will go up and down dramatically because ground water levels also fluctuate throughout the year. It would be more reliable to line the pond with clay and fill it with spring water so that it's isolated from the groundwater system.

Thanks for that info. That's what I'll do.

Please don't take my word for it!

Send a PM to Esshup, I think he has a groundwater pond and is an actual expert on the subject of ponds. Unlike me. I'm just an interested amateur.

A good pond builder could find enough subsoil clay to line the basin with clay so the pond holds water better. Minimum clay liner thickness is usually 2 ft and best is 8ft thick in the upper 6 ft and below that depth is usually a clay 'belly' basin. Find and use the best pond builder in your area.

For a small pond like you are planning and to grow a decent amount of fish you will need to add high protein fish food (40%+) to fish that have previously been pellet trained. Check out an eastern PA fish farm maybe close to you called Shultz's for good quality pellet trained fish. http://buybass.com/
It might be worth a trip there to get quality fish.

There are a few small ponds near me that have only yellow perch (YP)and they keep growing well due to an annual harvest and being fed pellets. A few predators may help with eating extra perch young but it may not be necessary if you manage the perch well. With perch only and feeding you could probably harvest 15-25 8"-10" perch each year from a 50x50 pond. You could add a few (15-25) trout each fall, feed them and harvest them in June-Jul or they may live year round with the right water quality. You would have to try it and see once the pond is built. If the pond could somehow be spring fed that may help with improved water quality and long term survival of trout and YP. If not just YP will also work if done properly. If feeding the fish, artificial aeration is very beneficial to optimum water quality in a small pond so plan to provide for that (electrical within 200ft) feature.

There is quite a bit of info in past posts here about fish options for a small pond similar to that you are planning. The problem is the info is not all in one place so you will have to do some searching and asking questions.

Yep, got a groundwater pond. I don't know if I'm an expert, I defer that to Mike Otto, and other great dirt movers here on the forum. I just have a lot of experience with them.

My property has a high water table in the usual wet spring, water is 24" below soil surface, and it will stand over a foot deep in the woods. When we renovated the pond, it was sand to 11', then 1' of gravelly clay, then pea gravel for the next foot. Back to sand and finally hit blue clay at 22' depth. Not enough to line the pond, and a pond liner of that size was out of the budget. In some areas of this county, there is a 50' thick layer of sand before the clay.......

Do a search for "groundwater ponds" and you'll see some pictures.

Got to thank all of you for your great help. Have built a few 5 acre ponds before but never anything as small as I'm going to do at 50 x 50. The water table holds water at 8" below the surface and with my small backhoe I dug down to 7 ft and found the top 4" is regular soil and then red mud down to 4' and then a mixture of both. I have a underground spring located on my property so I have all the water I need. I'm thinking of building up one side of the pond with excess soil higher than the other which I want only about 12" high. I also want to put in a small island of field stone which I have alot of and top it off with top soil and grow some flowers or some small evergreens. Saw a picture in a book with a similar Island and I like the looks of it. I'll probably go with the yellow perch as I don't think SMB would do well in a small pond. Any thoughts on my plan?

If your growing enough fish to eat you are basically doing aquatic farming in a real small pond.

I don't recommend an island for at least two reasons. 1. It provides more shoreline and underwater surface area for filamentous algae (FA) to grow. You will constantly fight FA and you want as few places for it to grow as possible to reduce the work to get rid of it. In a small pond it if often best to just remove the FA rather than use chemicals so more algae means more work. Plus it will difficult to get to the island to deal with the FA or weeds. 2. The island will provide a baffle to suppress good water circulation from your aerator diffuser. If you have an island you will need 1 or 2 extra diffusers to get water circulation to the back side of the island. Good farming depends on good water circulation and good water quality.
SMB would live just fine in a small aerated pond; maybe too good in that they would reproduce too well and you would get too many bass eating too many perch that you want to harvest. In a small pond such as yours if you want predators, you want those that do not reproduce so you have good control of the number of predators - too many take a few out, not enough add a couple. Large perch 8"+ will eat small perch 1"-3" but maybe not a lot of them depending on other foods available. Pellet fed perch grow fast and stay fat.

Bill, I never thought about the circulation problem which make good sense. My wife and I plus are grandkids love to fish for SMB and we use to live on Owasco lake so fishing was great.Thats why I asked about the bass. Maybe I can grow some good ones with a good population of perch to keep them happy.

BKnuckles - A good thing to first try is to first get the minnows and YP established and when the YP 1st or 2nd spawn (yr2) is at the end of the summer or at 1 yr old add 2-4 SMB of the same sex either males or females. Both males and females grow at about the same rate. Catch them in the spring when the young recruitment YP are 1 or 2 yr old (Apr) and then in late Apr early May get the smallies when they are pre spawn or spawning so you can see milt or obvious distended abdomens or catch an obvious male off the nest. Also you could easily recognize a fresh post spawn female smallie by her enlarged reddened swollen urogenital opening (egg laying orfice). If you can use a few single sex smallies in your YP pond that would be an ideal way to have a few SMB and prevent population problems due to reproduction.