Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Building a dam DAM BREAK!!!

we got just over 2" of rain last night with 1-2" since tuesday on yop of already saturated ground. my dam which is not complete was over run by water i got a cut in it 5' wide down to the stream bed about 4'. this dam is not going to be really high it will only hold back 5' of water most of the depth was achieved through excavation which will not be finished till the week after next. the break isnt that much of a problem it will give us somewhere to put all the clay we dig up with the backhoe. just wanted to post this as a warning. we have a 1' diameter pipe to handle normal flow but during floods we will have a 6' wide by 8" deep. well despite this the project is still set to be stocked mid or late may with BG, FH, and CC then LMB in the fall.

o the clay core is very visable where the dam was breached that was neat to see i didnt know we had it so thick our dam is 20' wide and the clay core is about 5-6' wide cool to see it.

Why not build it bigger and hold back a couple acres?

to build it bigger would require a the dam to be a lot longer and a then permits would be required i have it so that i wont have any fuss with permits and it will be small enough(o.25 acres) to be able to easily manage but large enough to have good fishing. plus their is a owners only couple hundred acre lake 15 minutes from my house where i take my boats to fish and tube/wake board. there is also a nice little river 3/4 miles from my house with big CC, bullhead, and SMB that are 15-24" i cought a 3 pounder last year with lots of two pounders. another reason is that i am only 16 and am building this with a few 1000$ i saved up last summer. so its basically me and my dad using a backhoe and our tractor to move the dirt out of the bottoms and build the dam. the final reason is that our horse barn is very close to the dam site and pond 30-40' away and if we were to build the dam higher we would have to build a dam to protect the barn which is the reason the dam would have to be so long. my dad doesnt want to do that in case of a failure he doesnt want the barn flooded.

The main pond will be 0.25 acres average depth 6' max depth 12'. also i am creating a silt pond which will be about 0.05 acres and be dug down 15feet then i am going to concreate dead elms into buckets and place them around the outlet and inlet of the silt pond in 5-7feet of water to produce a swampy apperaence, to stop some debris and also for structure.

Sure would love to see some pictures of it.

Eddie

i'll try try to get some pics today it is gonna be around 76 today that is some nice spring weather.

sorry didnt get any pics today it got to 80 here but i had to break a horse back in today. i didnt get thrown off that was good but it still took a lot of kicking and energy to get it to do what i wanted it 2 do. well i'll try 2 get some after school tomarrow gotta get back to writing a report.
o ya i also took our new boat out for a spin gotta it goin 45mph with three guys in the boat its got a 100hp. maybe i'll test it on the pond the lake we took it on was nearing 60 degrees and i saw a lot of bass fisheman out there and i saw a few fish jump. i might go out next weekend and try to catch a few walleye.