Background
In 2012 a large fire burned through the northwest section of the ranch and not a "good" fire either. It concentrated most of the heat in a riparian valley and it got hot enough to kill all of the standing oaks and reduced everything else to ash. Unfortunately, we didn't own this portion of the ranch at the time and couldn't manage the regrowth with wildlife or recreational goals in mind. What exists there now is an impenetrable mess of sumac, plum, and greenbriar thickets. Its so thick not even the deer or hogs will go in. However because its all new softwood growth, it would be fairly easy to go in with machinery and clear it all out. We went back and forth on what to do with it and ultimately decided to start looking at building a large pond there.

The Lake
Some general info:
Total Watershed: 660 acres
Unimpeded Watershed: 450 acres. Flooding of these ponds impeding the watershed does occur in high water years, unfortunately we are about 5' low in most of these.
Estimated Size: 8-15 acres depending on final dam and shoreline
Aerated: Yes - based on what i've read on the forum, it sounds like aerating during the night will be the way to go during our hot Texas summers
Fed: Maybe - Would probably have one fish feeder on a dock, but expect the fish to get most of there nutrition from natural forage
Species: FHM, RES, BG, TFS, LMB, HSB

Here is a general view of what it could looks like at full pool. The pond here is shown at 13 acres.
[img]http://imgur.com/xZ2dImf[/img]

This past week our crew dug some test holes near the dam location and we found clay good for the core at 15'-20' at the deepest location. Good news but it will be a lot of dirt moved. Luckily we should be able to use it all for the backside of the dam along with the removed topsoil from the rest of the lake. This will result in a deep 30'-40' bowl near the dam from the clay excavation, but I don't see any negatives with that yet. It was already going to be deep enough to be stratified so if anything, provided we get the aeration right, that just means more deep, cool, oxygenated open water for the stripers and threadfin? The rest of the soil in the pond has a high enough clay content that, once the topsoil is removed, and it is compacted, it should be pretty tight.
[img]http://imgur.com/npb2Kyh[/img]

Hoping to keep the forum updated on progress if y'all are interested. We have done some small pond renovations before, but nothing to this scale and are very excited about the project. There will be a lot of questions along the way so a thank you in advance for this awesome community.