Pond Boss Forums INTRO New Forum Member Introduction Hello, My name is Josh

Hi everyone

My name is Josh, I've been reading Pond Boss for a long while now, don't know why I waited till now to join. Found you all because every time I'd search for pond info your site was to be honest the only one that has relevant "real world" info. Oh the land grant colleges and other academics had the ideal scenarios down, but as we all know boots on the ground, different sites, environments etc,, change the game.

I am a farmer in southwestern Indiana. I have a one acre pond right now, its spring fed, stays cold on the bottom, which is about the 18 foot mark. I built this pond after removing the original pond. I bought this farm in 1999, and the original pond sat up on a small hill, when I measured it I found it was one eighth of an acre, when I discovered that it was spring fed I wondered why it was built so small. Then some neighbors told me it was built with a 3 point scoop on a 1968 Ford 4000 Gas tractor, well that explained it, it was built to hold the spring water for the cattle.

The ground was red clay, so I drained the pond, and let it dry, (best I could since ya can't turn off a spring) and rented a D6 Cat and ripped out the dam. Below the dam, down the hill was a swampy area, were the pond overflowed anyway, so I rebuilt the dam on the other side of this, the dam turned out to be 23 foot tall and 166 feet long, and now 10 years later it has never dropped below 18 feet. During heavy rain it gets to 22 feet and goes over the emergency spill way.

That project went well, I'm looking at a 5 acre project now. I'm not sure how to go about this one, though I know I like doing these things myself. This is a large ravine, only 5 acres of which are suitable for the pond, the other part flows out into a nice 8 acre valley which I use for pasture. This 5 acres is steep and kinda narrow, and the watershed is about 50 acres, which is huge for this area, so serious planning for the overflow is in order. Id like to get folks input on this, Ill try to figure out how to post some pictures,