Yes, I've thought about considering it to be a smaller lake and just live with it. But I haven't given in to that yet.
I don't have any intention of just laying it on the bottom. We're going to haul in more clay for several days and smooth and pack it with a dozer and hopefully a sheepsfoot roller if I can find one close by. I'd like to add enough clay that the clay itself would seal wherever the leak is. To go the extra mile I will then lay the plastic over the clay. To go another extra mile we'll add more clay on top of the plastic. I want to add as much clay as I can to displace as much water as I can. Hopefully this will help with the downward water pressure too.
This was the site of another cattle pond. It held water wonderfully. We never had one minute's trouble out of it. The problem started when I knocked that levee down, back down the hollow about 100 feet, and built a bigger levee. When I got the levee to the height I wanted it, THAT's when we noticed the leak.
I think the water line much have backed up over a hidden sand pocket. We've tried everything to located them, but I think now the thing to do is forget looking for a sand pocket and just plate as much as I can with clay, add plastic, and more clay. I'm going to draw it down to that original pond basin, which does drop off like a bowl, and work it with clay and the plastic all the way around and out. I just stocked it in 2008, so the fishing is getting to the prime stage and I don't want to drain the whole thing to re-work all of it and lose the fish.
DS
