Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations How Big Do I Need?

I have about 12 acres in Campbell, TX (East Texas area). I'm wanting to put in a pond to put some large mouth black bass. I would like the pond to be self-sustaining.

My main concerns are: The fish having enough room to do their thing and equally important that it's big enough to where a big drought would not lower the water level such that it would kill off all my fish.

My land is mostly forest, so I'll be having to clear out the area where the pond will go and I really don't have a lot of spare room, so I'm curious what would be a good size pond for what I'm wanting to do? I'd also like to make it as deep as possible (within reason), so how deep should I go with it?

Thanks in advance

Probably less than an acre... But it is hard to control largemouth bass (LMB) in a pond that small without heavy management.

Griff,
It depends on the watershed and your topography. If you give us some details, the experts will be able to help you. Sometimes the pond you should build is not the pond you want, so you will have to decide how much effort you are willing to put in to making the pond what you want. And sometimes, mother nature will give you the perfect pond, but that is rare indeed.

In short, it will be a balancing act.

Welcome to the forum! I made my pond roughly 1 ac in size (average) but it will vary from 1 1/4 down to about 3/4 acre depending on the ground water level.

I've found that making a pond with sides that slope 3:1 is about as steep as I'd like because I like to walk down to the waters edge. 4:1 to 6:1 is even easier, but there could be problems with aquatic weed growth in the shallow water, depending on the water clarity. Weeds will grow if and where the pond bottom can get sunlight.

I made my pond with a maximum depth of 22 feet, but it filled in with about 3' to 4' of sediment within a month of being completed thanks to Hurricane Ike. I still have enough water when the pond is low, but my pond will drop up to 6' in water depth if I don't supplement the pond with well water.

I have to constantly remove LMB from the pond so they don't eat themselves out of house and home.

I appreciate everyone's replies here.



Can you please tell me what exactly is involved in "management"? I was really hoping for a naturally maintained pond. If you mean fishing it to control populations, then that'll be no problem between myself and my father

Highflyer, I'll try to provide some more info tomorrow when I have more spare time. What details in particular would be most helpful? I can provide overhead views from Google maps. Would that help?

I think he means fishing (but not just fishing, taking specific sized fish) and supplemental feeding.

Griff, a naturally managed pond can usually be accomplished for a while. Then, it becomes something like raising naturally maintained kids.

Building the pond means analyzing the area for the pond and the runoff area to fill and keep it at an acceptable level. A lot of us wind up stopping up gullies. Look at a topo map to define and analyze the run off areas. If you are in pine tree country you might have to lime in order to get the alkilinity to a point where the pond can be fertile.

Stocking with fish is usually the least expensive part of the trip.

Griff,
From reading here, and my experience, small ponds in the south tend to overpopulate with large mouth bass (LMB). When this occurs, the LMB won't grow much over about 14-15" and tend to stay skinny, in other words, their weight does not keep up their length. You will have alot of small bass. Assuming you have bluegill (BG) as forage, you will have some very large bluegill as they will get big enough that the 14" LMB cannot predate. You will have some very small BG (1-3") but nearly medium size as the overpopulated LMB will eat those first.

From reading here, it seems that small ponds in the north get overpopulated with BG.

There is a couple of books available from the pondposs.com site, "Perfect Pond-Want One?" and "Basic Pond Management" that would be helpful. My pond is in Mississippi, and I got alot of useful advice from this document before building mine: http://www.mdwfp.com/media/24904/farmpondmanagebooklet.pdf

Hope this helps some.
Dan

This is what I am saying.

Speaking from experience, we had an acre pond that all sizes of LMB in it. This was great for a few years then the LMB spawned several. One could catch a bass every cast but they were are all small in size. I am not sure catching bass between two people even if it was done most of the year could keep up with LMB reproduction. That is where other management techniques come into play.

Your key here and this is way down the road of course. Is watching your LMB relitive weight. If you are not familiar with what that means it's this.

There are charts that show you length and normal weights of LMB. Say for example.

You caught a 13.5 inch LMB. Normal weight on that is right at 1.3 pounds. If you weigh your bass and it's 1.3 or bigger then your doing pretty good. If you weigh him and he is 1.2 or smaller then your RW is less than 100 percent.

Of course you need to do this with a few fish to get a decent reading. There could always be just one fish that is skinny or fat so it's best if you can catch 3 to 5 fish and check them. If you are right at 100 percent RW or over then your ok. If you are less say in the 80 percent RW area then you may need to get rid of some of your LMB or add more forage for them, usually getting rid of a few LMB is easier then trying to keep up with adding fish that they gobble up right away unless you can get some larger 5 to 6 inch BG. RW charts is a hugh tool to let you know where you stand. I did not think it was that big of a deal at first but once you start managing a pond it becomes one real quick. First things first though like HighFlyer said above. You need to find out from someone how much run off you have to sustain a certain size pond. That I know nothing about. Maybe you could get a Game and Fish person out to your land to help you with that? Detailed topo maps might be able to give some of the experts on this forum some better insight to help you but I bet that is something that really needs to be checked out right there on the land. Hey Good luck and keep us posted as to what you do.

I was on vacation and just got back to read the comments. I really appreciate all the advice. Does anyone know any companies in my area who are professionals at digging ponds? I need someone who can really scope out the land and give me good advice as to where the pond needs to be. I'm in Hunt County, TX between Greenville and Commerce.

After walking my new land and doing a bit of some thinking, an acre pond, while not impossible, would seriously take up a lot of my limited space. If I were to choose something smaller, like a 1/2 acre for example, is there another fish that would do well in a pond that size? Only fish I can't have is cat fish (for personal reasons). I prefer to not to have to do a lot of heavy management. Can you guys give me some information on other fish for smaller ponds?

I have a friend that is in your same perdicament. I would recommend HSB, RES and HBG (supplementally feeding of course to get the best fish growth). With 10# of FHM stocked in the pond 6 months before stocking the other fish.

Re-stock the HSB and HBG yearly to replenish fish that were removed.

I'm not liking the idea of restocking. Just curious: How big a pond would I need in order to have large mouth bass without "heavy management"?

Griff, do you have the black clay like Greenville, or is it sand/red clay mix like Sulphur Springs? I would definitely spend my money up front with a good dirt guy, to make sure you have good watershed and soil that can hold water, and replenish as needed.

If the water shed is limited, then I would think about going deeper to hold as much runoff as is possible during the Spring rains.

One thing to think about is that the land may best dictate the location of the pond, and that may not be the place you would pick.

But, if you can hold water, and can get the banks sloped correctly and get vegetation growing to protect those banks as soon as possible, the the maintenance part of the pond should primarily revolve around put and take of fish. That can still be time consuming but managing with a lure and line is far more fun than managing with herbicides and shovels.

I know the drawing below looks like an Etch A Sketch, but this is what I decided to do with my CNBG pond last Fall. I had it dug far deeper than needed, to make sure the volume stayed during droughts, and had about 30' at the top sloped for spawning areas. So, unless we get absolutely no rain, I have enough water to keep the fish happy.

FireIsHot,

I'm not real sure what kind of dirt I have. I was looking on some website which showed a map and soil types and it divided my land into sections and showed part of it as "Sandy Loam" and part as "Clay Loam". But I'm not real sure that the website is accurate.

Below is a link to a video I made while walking my property. It's a bit shaky and you probably can't tell much from it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgw1fM_fQog

At 5:10 you can see an area where there is a very small (and dirty) pond on the property back in the brush. It's so thick it's hard to even get back there. Along the trail I walked to get there that land is all sloping toward this area. But my land ends about 20 feet from that point.

I totally agree with you on digging deep to plan for drought. Here in Texas we really need to prepare for the worst.

Griff, I just checked my map - just a cursory glance from a geologic/geographic perspective tells me you should be in a transition cretaceous/tertiary zone or as FireIsHot says Blackland Prarie or Post Oak Savannah - good pond soils either way.

I drive that route each trip to our ponds and don't observe any pond problems - other than drought!

Griff, I'll defer to George on soil issues, but from the video and my ninja like ears, it sounds like you have the red clay. If so, George is again correct, as it is very good compatible soil.

Your property looks pretty flat, and I wasn't able to tell much about runoff, but soil composition and run off are probably going to be your determining factors on pond placement.

Here in TX, ponds live and die by runoff, so again, a competent dirt guy is a must. He may not advise the pond you want, but I bet he'll figure out the pond you need. There's nothing worse than a beautiful semi dry pond.

Hope this helps.