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I’m with you Dave I need a lot of rain also down over 4’….

Thanks pond boss family I appreciate it

Lol! Well played!

Ice?

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Happy Belated Brian! Hope it was a good one.

No, but it usually provided a bigger LMB. I was going with a more sporting artificial lure angle, but pellets will certainly catch feed trained LMB.

On very rare occasion during the summer, there will be a school of large GSH just suspended at the surface. Maybe 150 fish or so, and perhaps more if the school had depth. But when they sense my presence, they disperse. Aside from that, I never see the GSH suspended, or suspended while looking at a feed pellet.

So yesterday was pretty wild to see that.

There are between 10-15 CC and Blue Cats in the 5 lb + size, at least one HSB 6 lb + with ten HSB in 14" range, as well as LMB to maybe 2-3 lbs. So I can't understand the GSH acting all high and mighty like they own the joint.

That raging river in your video must be tamed for your dam to survive. Generally there are two ways to do it.

1.) You can build an earthen dam, but you must have a concrete chute to pass the entire amount of floodwater at maximum flood stage. If the flood in your video is 50m wide and 2m deep, then you need a chute of 100 square meters plus a safety margin. That is a big concrete project!

2.) You can build an earthen dam, but use an emergency spillway to direct floodwaters AROUND the dam. Imagine a "nice flat area" about 10.5m above the river bed and beside your dam. If you had an area 500m wide, then the same floodwater flow would only be running 0.2m deep. That is much less force than what is shown in your video which literally can rip trees from the ground.

For a normal lake water level 10m above the river bed, you would probably need a dam that is 12-13m tall. The extra 2-3m is called the freeboard (as gehajake mentions above). As the floodwaters rise, the water level will move up the freeboard of your dam and the water will continually get deeper flowing through your emergency spillway. You still must prevent the water from rising over the top of your dam at the peak of the flood. That is the purpose of the freeboard.

You also will need a concrete spillway with a large pipe through the dam to safely pass "normal" river flows through your dam, such that the emergency spillway does NOT get regular use.

A big flood will probably do some damage to your emergency spillway. However, it should be eroding across a wide plain rather than just cutting through a narrow dam. Usually there is lots of stone placed against the wing of the dam that is adjacent to the emergency spillway, so that any erosion does not reach the dam. You can then repair the damage in the emergency spillway, make it as flat as possible again, and replant your vegetation.

I personally, am still worried about the size of the project required to dam a river that wild.

One option would be to build some pond basins on higher ground and pump water from the river to fill them.

If you have some dry waterways (low ground) running down to the river banks, another option would be to build some dams adjacent to the river. You could run pipes at the elevation of your desired pond surface water level into the river. That way the river waters would flow into your ponds at flood stage. If you widen the banks of the main river there, that will calm the flow and you can put rock on your dam faces to prevent erosion.

Do you have any sandy ground adjacent to the river? I have some "groundwater" ponds on my property that are in very sandy areas adjacent to a small creek. Even when the creek goes "dry", that sand is still full of water. I have dug out a pond that is BELOW the creek bed, and it has water in it even though we are in a 3 year drought.

If your sandy layer is extensive and contiguous, you do not need to dig out a pond immediately adjacent to the river. You might be able to excavate a pond beyond a bank that is not over-topped when your river is at flood stage. You can test this with a large backhoe or even a small excavator by digging a test pit and observing how fast it fills with water. The overnight water level should very closely match the water level in the river if the sand readily allows for subsurface water flow.

Good luck and keep learning on this project! The more you know, then the better ideas and questions you can have for the engineer during the design phase.

What's your water temp? How deep is the pond?

Due to hog invasion, I see a snake about every other year. I once saw rattlers daily. Copper headed rattle moccasins were in the creek, the ponds and the yard. No more.

Happy birthday Dave.

HBD

I have the garmin sonar, Seems to work well with depth and temperature, fish locating not so much
We totally eradicated the pond this spring and with the fish element on it still showed fish.
It also doesn’t do well with locating any of the cover at the bottom

I'm feeding because of the trout in the pond.

I started the forage pond project as somewhat of an accident (needed fill dirt). Decided why not give it a try as I think I have too many predators in my main pond (1/8th acre) to establish shiners. The forage pond is about 12 ft X 10 ft and around 3.5 ft deep. I can run aeration if needed. I kept the pond small as I didn't have a ton of space and I wanted to make sure it wouldn't be too difficult to seine or net fish out.

Good job, Theo.

That is a handsome lad!

Link to my renovation thread: My Front Yard Cow Pond

I made some mistakes along the way, but with help from the brain trust here I've learned how to work with those mistakes.

Went out for opening day of rifle season and three of us got zero deer!

Property had 11" of snow three days prior to opening day. I thought the deer would reduce activity while the snow was deep, and then come out around the third day as they got hungrier and the snow depth was reduced.

Boy was I wrong! I saw one buck, and the other two guys only saw one doe each. I frequently see herds of does on opening day. Further, we usually hear 10-15 shots from other properties. This year we heard only two.

The snow had started to melt with some sunshine and some days over 35. On opening day it was 20F at 6AM and the snow was about 4-6" deep where I was walking in. However, the snow had a very thick melt/refreeze crust on the top. I sounded as loud as a marching band with every single step.

Questions:

1.) How do deer respond to snow cover? (Especially in places where the snow cover will probably disappear in 1-5 days.) Do the deer know they no longer have any camouflage in their coats and are now easily visible to predators?

2.) When the deer know they will be making lots of noise on "crunchy snow", will they wait for more silent conditions to move?

Thanks!

Welcome to Pond Boss, Terry!

I asked a similar question about slopes a long time ago - and got lots of good advice.

However, I mentioned "kids fishing" and people said that SAFETY should also be part of the design. They said I should have one obvious area of shallower slope where a human can navigate through the muck or slick clay and still walk out of the pond.

That won't even be wasted space, since the BG will use that stretch of shore for spawning, etc.

I used plastic barrels for my pier, I'll never use them again. I will go with the real rectangular floats from Dockbuilders Supply in Florida.

I also learned that the treatment that they give wood now is garbage. I will only use lumber that is treated for wood to water or wood to ground contact not regular grade treated wood. My pier is rotting away after 12 years and that's with re-sealing it every couple of years.

Another thing, if you are using deck screws, use stainless ones. The coated ones rot away after around 10 years.

Hello.

Thanks for the site.

This is one of those things I'd jump on if available. But I imagine high demand and low availability will keep me out of the market a while. But, if you're ever looking for a testing waters I've got a sweet spot full of white and black crappie....


Keep up the groundbreaking and good work Snipe. I always enjoy following along.

My click went to Kula, Serbia.

Kula, Hawaii is probably more likely.

Can you give us some more accurate info before I start writing about Kula, on Mars.

59 degrees sounds like it should still be in the safe zone.

5-6# for a LMB in MS is definitely doable! You just can't have very many decent bass in one acre, but you should get 1-2 over 7# hopefully if you don't fish them out before then.

Congrats, as of today you now have a fishin' pond! Good luck and have fun.