With OUT OF THE BOX thinking and proper planning there are risk that sometimes yield great rewards. I will explain a pond I have talked about on here before and how it came to be.
A 1/2 acre pond with a couple tons poundage for carrying capacity per surface Acre.
The thought process went like this. I have a very wet piece of land with high volume of water going thru it. Clay hills on one side and elevated road way towards the other. Lay of the land would be perfect to excavate and pile dirt around to dry up area around pond towards road side. Soil Samples show clay no further than about 6' down all over that goes down several feet. Decided would dig deep enough to get enough clay to put in a core along the road side of the pond. Had a water flow test done was told it exceeded 300 GPM. Survey shows it will be about 1/2 acre big. In the planning stage of doing the math we decided we would average about 8' deep to get the extra clay we wanted out of the pond site. That meant we would have about 4 acre feet of water when done and it would fill up in about 72 hrs. Getting the proper people onsite and research showed that I could pretty much forget having plankton blooms. The fine clay would nearly always mean the water would have a muddy appearance (even more so with catfish). Also that volume of spring water would mean I would need to build in some water fall aeration (see attached pick of 1 of the simply pipe drop aeration). Basically I knew at building time I was going to basically have some of the conditions of an Oligotrophic lake. However the water volume meant I would have the annual water capacity of at least a 60 acre lake 8' deep. This was the key to my capacity. I also wanted the pond not to cost me a lot to keep up. I decided I would design it for Catfish so I could sell some of them to cover some expenses. With the water flow it was going to be like raising cage fish if I wanted it to be. Well we got it built and it went just like it was laid out. Water at discharge was still 300 GPM (pic of 48" exit pipe water flow attached). Nothing green in pond, water was either very clear or muddy. Put in 1000 6" catfish to start with to see how things would go. Started feeding heavily. About 3 months later was catching and eating some of the best catfish I ever had from a pond. It seemed to me that the high water flow also made the catfish taste shall we say less fishy than a regular pond fish. Outside of feeding I drain the pond and remove silt from bottom and spread in pasture about every 10 years. Occasionally I will put salt in the stream when I have higher density / capacity in the pond. A little Salt from time to time added is kind of like a medicine for fish as I learned from local fisheries. I have since stocked at times over 2,000 catfish in this little hole. I lost a lot of fish one time when the county decided to flush a new water line they put in and put massive amounts of chlorinated water into the pond. They cleaned the line flushing it straight into the ditch. Little did the water authority realize I had allowed the Phone company that laid new lines there to put in a pipe running straight to the pond. Anyway when I tell people I sometimes may have up to 5,000# of fish in a 1/2 acre pond they look at me like I am crazy. Little do they understand annual water wise it is the same as having less than a 100# of fish in a 1 acre pond 8' deep. Basically I have a pond that could be considered a natural cage system. All I do is put in fish, feed, do a little maintenance, and have fun catching them back out. There is several other details I did not go into. Like my 4 staged drainage system for the pond Via 4 different stand pipes. Etc.... Any questions feel free to ask. With the Holiday I do not know what day I will answer back, but I will get back with you.
