Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Building New 1 Acre Pond, What Now??

Hello All,

I'm new to the forum and a pond virgin. My wife and I are building our dream home on 40 acres in the WNY area (Go Bills!). The pond is going to be started next week and will sit directly behind our house (not yet built) as the center point of our back yard. The pond constructed will be a kidney shaped 1 acre size with a 12-15ft deep end. The site is a 15 acres open field with no trees surrounding the pond (yet).

Our question is, what steps should we take to ensure fish will survive in our new project? I've read through some topics in this forum and have seen people putting in brush piles and tree roots etc. Is this the correct plan of attack?

Being that this pond will be for recreation only, with fishing as a side bonus, i'm looking for any suggestions.

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Did you check the builders references? Is your pond a dug out or dam? How does water fill it?

What fish are you looking at?

I also built a new house on 40 acre farm ground then started on my 1 acre pond. before the pond filled I built many fish reefs, one big one from blocks, bricks, broken cement, etc. And others of tires, wood stakes, old rolled up fence wire and so on. Before the pond filled I started my deck/gazebo.


And as you can see in the picture I put gravel at intervals around the pond for fish spawning.
I first started trees that were kind of expensive as I wanted some that looked established.


Then I literally put in thousands of tree of which only about one in five lived because of mowing accidentally over then when small, rabbits and deer eating them, incidentally spraying them and so on. I planted 5 1/2 acres around the pond and now have a nature woods with a pond.


More of the pond area.






I got many of the trees from the dept. of agriculture that were very nice and not expensive. Others were clippings that I started. It wasn't that hard.

I also put in two dump truck loads of sand in beside the deck for swimming.

Yes, the builder is actually family of a great friend. He's been more than helpful with everything from ideas to site planning. The pond will be dug out in the middle of a hay field and hopefully we hit a spring, otherwise it will be filled by rain/snow/ground run off etc.

As far as the fish, nothing crazy. Any suggestions? We were thinking some bass and hopefully eventually some carp to help keep it clean.

John, wow that a very similar set up to what we're working with. I like the idea of the gravel around in areas for the fish to spawn.

Great looking area!

Buff you will no doubt get FA algae mats on top of the pond. What worked on my one acre pond when I didn't have that many plants to help control FA was 20 KOI carp and 6 Israeli Carp. I also had large mouth bass that ate the young carp and I never ended up with more then the 20 KOI and the 6 Israeli Carp.