Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? Lake Rehab Project

Well, "we're pregnant" as they say. Once you have a Komatsu 200 series track hoe with 52" bucket cut your levee there ain't no turnin' back. This happened last Wednesday then I was out of town from Thursday through yesterday and can't wait to get back out there. There's about 2/3 acre of 3-5 foot depth water left from what was about 7.8 acres. I will apply rotenone this weekend and see what comes up (more photos to come). The caretaker said 20 grass carp didn't make it (presumably died of asphyxiation) and he swears they weighed 40 or 50 pounds apiece. I guess I'll find out soon enough because he could only get about half of them out and the others are floating and stinking. He said we lost one bass he pulled out of there and it was nearly 8 pounds! He says you can see all sorts of fish - catfish, bass, sunfish, swimming around and piping from time to time. I started the project in late August by building a 4" PVC siphon and it pulled the lake down about 4 feet before it quit. After many futile attempts to restart it I called in the big guns. You can see what 50+ years of siltation will do but frankly I was surprised at the depth especially near the levee where it is easily 18 feet in spots. This project was precipitated by extensive beaver damage to the levee, tree growth on the back side and out-of-balance fish populations. Also I want to create better structure. I opted for the expensive nuclear option but I only want to do this once. I'll have my forage fish (CNBG, RES, FH) stocked in mid-October then LMB in May. I'm conidering TS in march but am undecided yet. Regardless, I've got enough water now and a good enough watershed that there ought to be plenty of water for stocking in October. I'll attempt to post some photos in the series of what transpired last Wednesday. It's amazing how quickly 7 million gallons of water can move through a big cut in your levee.

Aerial of my lakes. The large one (7.8 acres) is the subject.


Water level prior to cutting levee.


Levee Breach


Flowing nicely!


Dropping fast...


Stumps popping up.


Look to the right of the track hoe and you can see multiple beaver holes in the levee.


Test hole dug in front of levee where it's shallow. Good clay content! This will be dug out and used to widen the levee 5:1.


View from front yard (levee is to the left). Notice water level from siphoning now freshly drained area probably 10 feet deep at bottom of old creek bed.

I'd love for the photos to be embedded in the post above so if any friendly moderators know how to tweak the post to make that happen please be my guest! Thanks.

There you go Bodock. In the future use the "IMG code" instead of the "Direct Link". That will get it to show up.

Gotcha, thanks a bunch!

Nice job! I'll bet the fish are thinking "now just what the he.. is going on?"

This is going to be a fun job to keep track of. Thanks for posting.

50 years of silt is going to be pile.
How are you going to move it? Where are you going put it.

Good question. Much of it will be used for the levee. My contractor is using a track hoe, a D-6 dozer and 2 bottom-dump trailers. In areas where he can safely take the track hoe onto the lake bed he will make ridges and countouring. In areas where he can't safely go onto the lake bed he will reach as far as he can to add depth and steepen the grade from shore. The far end of the lake has the worst silt problem and I'd venture to say 15% - 20% of the surface area of the lake had a 1-3 foot depth at full pool. That's the area where it's not cost effective to use removed silt for the levee so we're going to use as much as we can by building an elevated road around that part of the lake. The contractor also has a couple of drag lines and we may use them to add more depth to the back side depending on how much we get done with the track hoe and how much money I've spent by then. Undoubtedly some of the silt we remove will have to be hauled away from the lake and dumped elsewhere on my property - I want to minimize this for obvious reasons.

Agreed with Otto; cool project, well worth following. Good documentation so far. Thanks for draggin' us along.

Good looking project you have there! It'll be interesting following the progress.

Hopefully the silt will pack down enough and allow you to drive on it. Otto said a while back that it takes a heck of a long time for it to dry out.

Supposedly one of the grass carp measured 54" long. Is it reasonable to assume that fish was nearly 50 pounds? I have never seen one that big. Also, we have had a bunch of rain this week and the remaining water is muddy now. Will that impact rotenone's effectiveness by binding it up?

Here are a couple of updated photos from yesterday 9/17/09. 4 full days of work is all that's been accomplished due to nonstop rain for many days in a row. All the trees, shrubs and briars have been removed from the back of the levee and a fair amount of dirt has been piled up back there. The contractor is mixing muddy silt with dirt prior to piling it up.

Back of Levee


Front of Levee

I can't give you an answer on the Rotenone. I'll bet that's one muddy mess that he's working in!

Rotenone seems to work.


The track hoe operator came to bury as many fish as he could. He was not excited to work amidst the funk of thousands of rotting fish.

Here are some updated pics from today. They resumed work yesterday and have gotten a bunch done with 1 track hoe & 2 dozers. We had over 10 inches of rain over a 2 week period which flushed out the dead fish and completely opened up the old creek bed running down the middle of the lake - good! Water is leaching into the creek bed and the mud is drying faster. The main guy is thrilled at the clay he's cheating from the lake bed to build up the levee. He calls it "pipe clay" and says it is perfect for building a levee. There's a kitty litter mine not too far away and they use the same stuff in their kilns.

Looking north from south end of lake bed - newly opened creek bed.


This part of the lake bed still has some drying to do...


A bunch of new dirt behind the levee - it will be 5:1 when complete. He's going to spread topsoil silt he removed on top to assist with growing grass.



Scraping up big chunks of "pipe clay" for behind the levee - and making my lake deeper.


We're going to let the water level rise a few feet in order to get enough water to release fingerling CNBG and FHM in a few weeks. How much water do I need before I release 8 acres worth of fish? He plans on having the job complete by 12/1 then he can dam up the break in the levee and let the lake fill completely. I need to find the proverbial "goldilocks zone" of not too much water to impede the dirt work but enough water to sustain newly released fingerling fish. Advice? Thanks.

How cool is that to completely reverse the process right down to the original creekbed that defined bottom/pool in the first place. "dnop a gnitcurtsed" eb dluohs eltit daerht ehT.

It's really cool except when I get the weekly bill... It's all I can do to stave off project creep. Now we're talking about another levee on the south end and a 36" pipe to handle the main flow of runoff. This will enable them to use the lake dirt and build a road around the whole lake. His idea is good - a raised road with 6" PVC pipes every so often so runoff from the hills doesn't flow over the road but through the pipes.

How ya gonna keep the inlet side from choking? Hickenbottom?

[/quote]
How ya gonna keep the inlet side from choking? Hickenbottom? [/quote]

I'm not sure if he plans on using an inlet like Hickenbottom. The way I understand it is the inlet will be a bit higher than ground level on the other side of the road. He said when he uses 6" pipe he doesn't have problems with clogging but when he uses 4" pipe he does. We shall see.

What a great project!
Your photos really tell the tale.
You are also seeing how important it is to plan ahead and how hard it is to have a reasonable idea of the cost to do a project as this.
Most people have little idea what it takes to move muck and how much work it is.
Those folks run out of dollar tolerance way before the project is near where they wish it to be.
Our hats off to you.

Great Thread, hope it all turns out well.

My contractor emailed me a bunch of pictures including a few of the grass carp he removed. For reference, these fish are in a 52" wide bucket.

Holy sardines, Batman! Those fish are huge! Any idea how old they are?

I have been told they were older than 20 years old. I know they are older than 17 years old. Those fish must be north of 50 pounds apiece! There were 20 of them so 1000 pounds of biomass was tied up in 20 grass carp.

Wow. Better than an inch a pound!

Here are a couple of updated pics from 10/14. There's still a cut in the renovated levee to keep the water out while they finish the dirt work - approximately 5 more days of work including adding depth, ridges and installing a bunch of pipes and completing a road around the entire lake. They're also going to use the track hoe to drive 18 pilings for my dock - that will be a HUGE help. They are flagging 4' and 6' depths throughout the lake bed. The 4' mark is where they are scraping dirt around the edges and throwing it onto the bank for the road bed. The 6' mark (and deeper)is where I will install habitats of various types.

In this picture you can see part of a new island on the right side. Water will be 10' deep on the front side of the island and 6' deep on the back side. The top of the island will be 2' above water level.

They made a 6' deep flat spot in front of the fishing shed where the dock will be installed.