Originally posted by Bender:
Hello, I am a newbie in SW Michigan near Grand Rapids and I am planning a new 1/10 acre trout pond. After many months of research and trying to convince my wife that we need a pond, I finally got the ok to begin construction.
My wish list for the pond is (in order of preference)
1. I would love to fish for rainbow/brown trout in the pond.
2. I would also like some LMB and/or Perch as Bonus fish
3. I would like to be able to swim in a portion of the pond
I had a front loader tractor for a few hours and I scraped off the top soil and hit clay right away. My question is should I try to dig out the pond with the front loader or should I bring in an excavator? If I use an excavator do I need to do something to compact the clay?
Also, how should I structure the bottom of the pond and how deep should I dig it? I was thinking of keeping 5’ of shallow water for FH minnows to spawn and then going deep to 15’ quickly from there in the fish only section. Then in the swimming section have it drop off more evenly.
I am hoping to keep temperatures cold enough for trout by digging to 15’ and then using a diffuser for aeration. I was hoping to stock it the first summer with FH and maybe a predator or two and monitor the temps through the summer to see if I need to devise additional cooling strategies. http://www.weathershop.com/temptrax.htm offers probes and computer tracking software that I may pick up to help with the monitoring. Other than concurring with Bill Cody here are my thoughts on you project ideas:
1.) You can't have it all species wise especially in a pond that small. It's going to have to be coldwater species or the warmer water species. Optimum temps for the trout will not be optimum for the bass and perch and vice versa. You can do this in larger oligotrophic lakes however a small pond is different story.
2.) Like Bill said you can't have it that deep with such a small size pond. You're not only going to have some sluffing of the sides, you could have a dangerous pond to walk aroud as the sides could cave in. My 1/10th acres ponds are only 8 to 9 feet deep and they are almost vertical as it is and when I drain them the sides sluff in a little even with the solid clay I have here. Furthermore if you want coldwater fish you don't want any shallow areas that warm up easily. Why not put in a pier and swim off of that?
However there is a way where you can have the sides almost vertical but it will be more expensive. You could probably do it with a liner but that comes with some downsides.
3.) Just because your pond is deep doesn't mean diddly squat for keeping colder water for trout. That colder water is going to lose oxygen at some point in the summer and you probably won't be able to feed your trout as they will stay in the deeper water. Adding a diffuser will make matters worse by mixing your water column and warming it in summer. Result - cooked trout. I use a difuser in my trout pond that I run primarily at night because I run sufficent cold water in to counter the warming. (See below)
4.) If you want trout you will have to add cold water as I do. I add about 38 gpms of 51.6 F.degree aerated well water to my 1/10th acre trout pond 24/7 seven to 8 months of the year to keep the water generally in the low 60s all summer. If you add this kind of water be prepared to pay the bill for pumping it (it costs me about $100.00 per month), and you need someplace to overflow it i.e. wetlands, another bigger pond etc. On my property it overflows into two more ponds until the remainder that hasn't seeped or evaporated ends up in a highway ditch.
A friend in Gladwin tells me in Michigan it's illegal to overflow your water into a ditch. Or maybe just in his area? I do know your state is much stricter than mine and frankly I'm all for environmental protection but your state goes overboard to the point of ridiculousness.
Here the highway department is apparently whining about my overflow (that causes no harm to anyone and even benefits a wetland) but there is nothing they can do (someone reported me to the division of water recently and I think it was the highway department) however I am below the pumping rate for anyone to be able to take any action. 70 gpms or 100,000 gpms per day is the cut off for a major water user in my state and that is not me.
One advantage to a small pond in raising trout is it's easier to keep cool if you want to go the route of pumping in well water. It can be fun and is even profitable for me. See pics on my website.
http://www.ligtel.com/~jjbaird/bairdfish2.htm
