Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Structure amounts?

I read that people say you should have about 20% of your pond in structure. Why only 20%? Wouldn't making most of the pond places the fish want to hang out be a good thing? Maybe its a totally newbie question but i was just wondering.

I think there are a lot of answers to this question, but for me it would be the ease of finding the fish in your pond. If almost all your pond was structure, the fish would be spread all over your pond. Whereas, if your pond is only 20% structure, the fish are more concentrated, and therefore easier to locate... And therefore, easier to catch.

Just my 2 cents.

90% of the fish live in 10% of the water. The trick is to identify that 10% or manipulate the environment so you will know where they are.

When the water level goes up and down there may need to be structure at different levels also.

Too much structure might offer too many places for forage to hide too. And I thought I read a while back that placing structure in a small pond is discouraged, though I've seen that refuted in this forum.

We do a lot of refuting here. We refute on each other pretty well too.

Thanks for all the responces guys, I was just curious about it thats all.

MikeyBoy, you gotta graduate from school, become famous, hit it big and buy yourself a pond! I can see it now, 10 years from now, MikeyBoy posting pictures of 2 pound RES and 6 pound LMB from his backyard pond!

Yep, and with a bunch of Hollywood starlets littering up the place.

I'd like to refute that comment.

Mikey, keep in mind what Otto says. If you have a pond in many areas of California, just like the many lakes of California, the water level may vary significantly. DIED's pond and my pond will, in a drought year (like the past 3), drop 7 verticle feet. What was structure in March is high and dry in September.

Yeah I have been looking into property within an hour of the Burbank/Studio City area. From some very basic soil maps it would seem all the dirt out there is sand, so I might have to go the way of AaronM and do it liner style. I'll be lucky to pull of a .25 acre pond based on the land sizes I can afford. Then I'll be relying on rain (which is hard to come by in southern california) and the well.

I will probably end up buying a place within a year, this will not just be a piece of land dedicated to the pond, but my homestead, when I finally have my hand on the deed i will be bugging everyone for exact ideas as to stocking and everything. For now I have just been indulging my curiosity and enjoying learning about other people's experiences.

And as a side note - at the moment my glamourous Hollywood carreer involves watching hours and hours of the Bad Girls Club (yuck) and reporting on what happens. In film we have a sucky ladder climb just like everyone else lol.

Out there a liner is a good way to go. With the cost of water, you really don't want a leak!

esshup
good idea--The water loss issue comes up a lot more in the summer but it comes up all the time. Anything you can do to slow it down from the start will be money well spent.

In a smaller pond a liner is probably the way to go. As you said Mikeyboy with little to no rain from May through October evaporation will take a toll. Dig the pond deep and plan on losing several feet of water during the course of a year.

JHAP:

What's the going rate for an acre foot of water nowadays in the Southland?

Yeah it looks like that is what I will have to do. I think maybe digging a dedicated for the pond when money allows might be a good idea as well, to try to keep it filled.

Interesting question Esshup and the answer required reviewing a water bill and some math. Based upon my water bill, we are billed for water in a unit called HCF, which is an acronym for Hundred Cubic Feet. According to my water bill, a HCF equals 748 gallons. So since an acre foot contains approximately 325,851 gallons of water then that can be converted to 435.62 HCF of water per acre foot (325,851 gallons per acre divided by 748 gallons per HCF = 435.62 HCF per acre foot). The going rate on my water bill is $1.79 per HCF, accordingly an acre foot of water would cost $779.75 (435.62 x $1.79). Not anywhere as much as I though it would cost.

Of course this assumes that the water rate remains constant, which my understanding is that once you exceed a certain base line use the rate increases (sort of as a penalty).

Given the current water rationing in So Cal, if you used a acre foot of water in a billing cycle you would probably be arrested by the water police and sentenced to 7 years in prison. Which based upon our prison system means that you would spend 41 days in prison.

And based on Califonias attitude,you could get a home sentence with an ankle braclet and spend it at your now full pond.

I contemplatd drilling a well for irrigation when I lived in Oceanside, but found out that the San Luis Rey Aquafier was "owned" by the Water dept and if they found out about it they'd put a meter on it as well. It wasn't fun irrigating 1/2 ac out there!

Oh wow, I hope its not like that where I am planning on moving. I need to look into that.

Cali looks like such a nice state... To visit.