Pond Boss Forums INTRO New Forum Member Introduction Vidalia GA

Hi folks, newbie here.

Middle aged. Grew up tormenting brim, gills, crappie, yellow perch (fav fish), walleye, bass, pike, pickerel, trout, and salmon in fresh water. Have fished the salt from Maine to Key West and currently reside in central FL, mainly target reef fish, reds, trout, snook, and snappers. Grew up with boats too - canoes, john boats, v hull aluminum, and 20 ft CC range fishing boats. Currently have 10 ft john, 12 ft V, 18 ft V aluminums, built a couple 1-man Hybrid layout-type duck boats back in the day.

The only thing i really know about ponds is that they hold water and water holds fish and ducks float on it. Fish are for catching.

Wife and I are buying 10+ acres in the Vidalia GA area that has 2 ponds, .75 and a little more than 1.5 acres. Pasture on 1 side and brush on the others. Small pond is supposed to be spring or seep fed and in turns feeds larger lower pond.

Muddy looking water, did have some fine coontail type weeds on the perimeter. Seen a beaver and 15-inch soft shell turtle as well. Know the beaver has to go, not so sure about the turtle.

Seen the discharge pipe on the larger pond - 6-8, maybe 10-inch PVC with a smaller 1-2 inch pvc pipe that had a hump and sat flush with water surface on lower pond. Did not see a pipe at the upper pond.

That's all I know - seen em once. No idea about depths or what to analyze the water for.

So, we're in due diligence phase and realized that am gonna be taking care of these ponds. Might as well learn the ins and outs, best practices and grow some fun fish to catch & eat. Did a search for GA Giants and already learned a thing or two - copperheads might be better cause they get bigger - and ended up here. Seeing all kinds of stuff looks like i need to learn about - piping, water quality, aeration (totally onboard with solar aeration).

So, basically, here to learn about this new responsibility we will be starting.

Welcome to Pond Boss. I think due diligence would be going out to take water samples to test with a swimming pool test kit. API has a reasonable one for about $40. Lots of stuff to test but Alkalinity, PH, and Hardness are the among the top for basic tests. Couple the test kit with a fishing pole to see what species are in the pond. Very helpful here if you take a scale and ability to measure fish lengths for each fish. Should be able to give you info on both of these with any reports you come back with.

Again, welcome to pond boss!

Welcome to Pond Boss!!

Let the good times roll!!

Welcome to Pond Boss!

Part of your due diligence is to look at the dam of the main pond and the smaller pond. Does the largest dam look like it has been blown out by a flood and subsequently repaired? That is your most difficult/expensive thing to fix as a pond owner. If it hasn't blown out previously, then you are probably good to go. (If the upper pond is a groundwater pond, then the surface watershed feeding water to your ponds might be quite small. That greatly reduces the risk of a dam blowout when the remnant of a hurricane drops a deluge of water on your property.)

Next, are there trees on the dam? If so, they will eventually work very hard to cause a leak in the future. If there are big trees and you cut them down, then the dam might start leaking when the roots rot.

Do you have a tiny boat or puddle jumper? You can easily survey both ponds with a 10' stick of 3/4" PVC pipe. Determine your deepest parts, and your average depths. Also, you can feel the muck with your pipe. A clean bottom should feel "firm" and you have to work a little more to push in the pipe. For example, it could be clean, saturated sand. Also take some heavy string with a weight if the owner thinks there is some water deeper than 10'.

I don't like the muddy water. Is that in both ponds? Have you had recent heavy rains? One of the main reasons for muddy water is some type of fish that constantly stirs up the bottom of the pond. Carp/koi, bullheads, other types of trash fish? All can be dealt with, but might be some work before you can create the type of pond you used to enjoy for fishing.

Good luck on your property purchase and your new ponds!

Excellent post.

The ponds were excavated in about 2000, so 20 yrs ago. They are in areas of hydric soils and there may have been a creek bed or something. It is in a dry creek bed, they had some swamp and excavated the ponds, possibly to build up the pasture areas. Can't tell too much from the aerials on Google Earth.

The property dips about 20 feet from N to S, am wondering if the ponds are 10 ft deep or close to it. Supposed to be full of LM bass.

The dam is tree-free and I will keep it so.

The water is muddy cause it is in GA and there is a lot of clay.

Was gonna bring a 1-man duck boat up with me next trip and probe the bottom as suggested - create a map, and see about the muck and bottom composition.
Fish pole too, see if the tales of "teeming with fish" have any merit. Figure a beetlespin will catch about anything worth catching.

Take some worms and a bobber also.

Rod, all muddy water doesn’t have to be bad. I am thinking about a city lake near the town of Elmo Texas. About 50 miles SE of Dallas. We called it the Mud Hole. I used to drive a couple of hours to get there from Fort Worth. It had big cats, big bass and huge bluegills. Lots of water moccasins. We drove a couple of hours just to toss bright chartreuse weightless worms.

The average bass we caught was a little over 3 pounds. Somebody drowned in it and it has been posted No Trespassing for over 30 years. I almost bought some lake front property but found out that I couldn’t fish the lake.

But, this one was unique.

I have caught fish from a very muddy creek after a big rain. No idea why the fish were so aggressive, nor how they found my little lures.

I wonder why the Mud Hole was constantly muddy? If people fished for catfish there, it could have a big population of introduced bait goldfish. Also if it ever connected to the river, it could be full of something like buffalo that constantly stir the bottom yet are very difficult to catch on a hook.

I think there was a Bob Lusk story about a Texas guy that kept stocking bass in the large oxbow lake on his property. The bass barely grew and barely spawned, and the water was always muddy. They finally decided to drain the pond and took out thousands of pounds of trash fish. I think even Lusk was surprised at the carrying capacity of trash fish in that BOW.

I talked to some locals about it. Nobody seemed to know why it couldn’t clear.