Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Wildlife Management Aerial pictures of pond full pool after completion

Here are a couple of aerial pictures taken about 1 year ago.My pond was finished in late May 2015 and reached full pool around the middle of June 2015.The pond area is 3 acres.The wooded area on the back side of the pond is mainly cedar trees with a small clearing where I have planted a food plot.After the brush piles are removed I plan on planting more trees on the back side of the pond for habitat.

Looks beautiful!

Nice place!

It looks like a Fender guitar -- intentional?

Gorgeous place!! Kind of looks like a guitar! Are you an Elvis fan? J/K I love it!! Love how manicured the grass around the pond is...do you have any closeups? Great job!

Thanks RAH! I always enjoy seeing the pictures of your property.You have a good eye for landscape design and waterscape. I know you have a heart for conservation.

The shape of the pond was just determined by the lay of the land and availability of good soil.The pond was built in a low lying wet wooded area between farm fields.The island was not in the original design but was due to the contractor needing some good clay dirt.The contractor decided to pan across a point to get good soil for the dam thus creating the island.

Thanks Peach!Elvis??.. I actually prefer old country.Sometimes late at night when I walk out by the pond I can hear banjo music though!
I have been mowing the areas around the pond with a 48" zero turn mower.I would like to use my finish mower in some areas but my tractor is old and finicky.It seems like I can mow for 1hr then I have to stop and work on the tractor.It is a 1958 model and had set for 9yrs before I bought it so there are a few bugs to be worked out.

Really pretty setting with the trees and everything. I like the varying shoreline. My wife would say that gives it "character" compared to a pond without distinctive features.

I spent quite a few hours on the dozer giving our pond the "character" my wife desired. It still does not have near as much as yours or as much as she would have liked.

Gonna build a bridge to the island?? That would be awesome!! Just saying! lol

Snrub,
There are a few things I would have had done differently had I found this forum sooner!I had four dirt guys give me estimates in December of 2013 and quickly narrowed it down to two.
One guy estimated he could complete the job in 6 days (I had the feeling if the job ran longer I would have to open up my checkbook wide! The second guy wanted to make the pond about 1/3 the present size so he could have a place to put the roots and brush on the backside of the dam and he said his big dozer had not been ran for several months.I passed on these two contractors.
I really liked the next guy.He was very knowledgeable about ponds.He had even worked with the DNR building ponds and habitat.He said that the pond bottom is your main source of structure and was excited about the number of coves and the tapering pond bottom.He said that with the amount of structure built into the pond bottom that I might have issues with an overpopulation of panfish because of their ability to avoid predator fish.He suggested that I have underflow standpipe installed where I could adjust water levels as needed.I wish I would have done this because I feel the positives would outweigh the negatives.The only thing I heard about this guy was he does great work if you can get him to show up( I had a friend that waited over two years for him to show and ended up using someone else). The dirt guy I went with was not the cheapest but give give me a "not to exceed this amount" bid which he pretty much stuck too.
They started on April 15th 2014 with an 84000 pound excavator removing trees and almost buried it.They had muck up to the counterweight and were able to work it out.They contractor had a lot of equipment so they left some here and worked on our pond in between other work.I lost track of man hours but at one time they had two D6 dozers, a scraper, the big excavator and a medium excavator.There were several spots that never quite dried up where they would get stuck giving the pond that desired "pickle barrel" bottom.The pond size kept growing just to find sources of dry dirt.They finished the final grade in May 2015.In hind sight, I would like the pond to be deeper in a few areas and maybe a deep hole next to the beach for diving.Maybe in a few years when time and money allows I will have an excavator come in an deepen a few of the shallow areas to reduce vegetation growth.
All in all we love the pond!!It has made staying around the house so much more enjoying.We have spend countless hours swimming,paddle boating,paddle boarding,and setting around the water cooking on a campfire.We just started fishing a little the last few weeks.

It turned out really nice. Rarely a day goes by when we are at home that I don't make it out to the pond at least once.

As far as doing things differently if you would have found PBF earlier, I can relate to that. I think I found PBF while doing a search for structure after I had pretty well finished building structure and the pond was finished except for the dock. I also would have done some things different, although like you, we are very satisfied with what we ended up with.

Good luck going forward and enjoy!

That is one cool looking pond!!!

One day, a little boy came to me and said, 'Hey Mister, I was looking on Google Maps and your pond is the shape of a fish, hahahahaha!!'

Little did I realize, he was absolutely right! I followed the contour of the land and added two peninsula's and it ended up looking like one of those goldfish crackers.

[img:left]http://http://rs1268.pbsrc.com/albums/jj562/Buckeyedudes/Misc/15ba840d-c52e-4bdd-aa03-27816b278901_zpsqxivm1gk.jpg~c100[/img]

Tubguy , Awesome looking place. What area of southern Indiana. Spent most of my life in Floyd county just outside of Louisville. In Washington county. now.

I love your place and setting! If i ever get a chance to "upgrade" my land, I would search out a place that allowed my to dig a pond much like yours rather than a round bowl. I didn't have many options on a hill-side to get depth.

Same as many here, rarely a day goes by without stopping at the pond to see what is going on. On the way to work in the morning, I am forced to pass it by, and it is hard not to stop and get out to throw a line a few times.

I thought about building a bridge but figured that might be a little pricey.The span is atleast 60 foot.I find myself watching episodes of Lake Life and finding an endless number of projects I would like to tackle.

I kind of thought mine looked like a malnourished catfish

Thanks R&R! I live in Southwestern Bartholomew County.Washington County is a pretty area!

Nice place for sure !!

Tracy