One of the first things to do is purchase, read, reread, and study Bob Lusk's book "Perfect Pond Want One". It goes into detail about purchasing land for a pond, choosing proper soils, design items and lots of topics for the actual construction portion.
All available Pond Boss books:
http://www.pondboss.com/store.asp?c=8When buying property with a pond, buyer be very aware of lots of potential problems with an existing pond.
1. It can be poorly designed with too much shallow water that leads to many headaches such as to too many unnecessary weed problems where you are always buying & adding chemicals.
2. I would never buy a pond until a chemical test is done on the sediments to determine if they are loaded with herbicides and to a lesser extent pesticides. You don't know what the previous owner did to that pond.
3. A leaky, contaminated pond is a liability not an asset.
4. You have no idea how the pond performs during TX droughts. Drought conditions can cause unusual problems for poorly designed ponds.
5. Streams that 'feed' a pond tend to contribute unwanted 'trash' fish and I would avoid those ponds.
6. Learn the cost of building a pond so you know its value and how much to add or subtract from the price or value of the property based on condition or the unknowns of the pond.
7. An existing pond that has a poor / unbalanced fishery or one that has been angler fish 'raped' before you purchased the pond will likely have to be renovated of old fish and restocked. Start over with your goals in mind. A larger purchased pond should be electroshocked to determine what comprises the fish community. All these things cost money and detract from the price or value of the property. Renovating a pond is not easy, takes time, and it is relatively costly with various types of headaches. Often time is money.
IMO often it is better to buy land conducive to building a pond and then design, build, and manage the perfect pond based on your goals. It is often not a good idea to buy someone else's mistakes. If you do it right you can grow big fish in just 1-2 years in a new pond. It does not have to take several years to grow some quality sized bass and panfish which is what we specialize in here on the Pond Boss Forum. As an example if you first stock forage fish let them reproduce to abundance and then stock quality bass,,, you can grow those bass to 3-5 lbs in one year as proven several times by Greg Grimes (Aquatic Environmental Services GA and other members here.
