All, this site is great, Bob has been very nice and I am looking forward to being part of this. Okay, here is what I have. I have two ponds on our farm, the first is an 11 acre pond at full pool, and the other, which is down stream from the larger pond is a half acre. I have added CC, CNBG, and FHM in the lower (smaller) pond and I have put CC, REBG, HBG, CNBG, LMB, and Crappie in the large pond. I have added an island for the ducks in the head waters of the large pond, I am going to add several Wood Duck boxes around the edge in the head waters for the wood ducks. I left 34 stumps all at least three feet in diameter and at least four feet tall in the channel, I had 8 really large holes dug in the bottom for the catfish in the deep water of the big pond (yes I know they will fill in, but they did not really cost any extra, so what the heck). I had two walls cut for the crappie, and I have built several ledges around the pond. I left an area of trees that are dying for cover in the head water area of the big pond. The water clarity is way more that 18 inches and I have added fertilizer twice trying to get more phytoplankton to grow. The frogs and the FHMs are doing great, I have thousands and thousands of FHMs in both ponds. The depth of the little pond is 11 feet deep in the deep end and 6 feet in the shallow end. The east side is natural, and the west and south side in sculptured for humans to use. The big pond is native on the east side as well with the head waters to the north which I am going to leave as natural as possible. On the west side of the big pond, I have it setup for people to "play." The planned depths are over 30 feet by the dam, and about 18 feet deep in the channel and about six feet or less in the head waters area. My plans are to grow nice fish to catch (and eat!), have a good place to swim, allow the birds a place to live, and control runoff. I do hunt and I do plan on hunting a few of the ducks each year. I had an erosion problem that is now controlled by the presence of the dam. I have a spring feeding the pond system and the water test really good (Alk around 80 Ph 7.2-7.4 as I remember). My pond captures the runoff from around 150-200 acres as well. I have an 8 inch anti-syphon pipe set up for flow through after the pond fills. When I know the my flow rates, I plan on adding a hydroelectric system to the set up. My plans for the ponds are simple, I want to give back to nature and enjoy what it give back to me. I joined this forum to learn and help out if I can. Any advise is welcome.
Again, thanks for such a great site, let the games begin!
Last edited by highflyer; 07/12/11 03:46 AM.
