So i am finally building a pond on my place in east tx. Bids are coming back and while expensive there not out of the range I was expecting. We will basically be flooding a draw where 2 hillsides come together. The final size should be around 5 acres plus and the majority is heavily wooded with hardwoods. My question is would yall consider letting a logger come in and take the wood to save on clearing or do yall think that will backfire. If loggers cut wood, pond builder may lose his leverage on knocking down trees stump in all. Its a possibility he could lose more time messing with those stumps and if I leave alot of stumps will they interfere with his sculpting and getting to good clay. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Brent McCarty

If he has a trac hoe he could still dig up stumps fairly easy from what I’ve seen them do. Talk to pond builder and weigh the difference in cost versus logging. Big oaks are worth a bunch nowadays. Welcome to the forum.

Thank You, I will talk to them. To be honest I hate to see them wasted some of them have to be 100 years old. I’ll put some wood in this pond but not this much. Thanks again for the welcome.

I would shun oak as a wood to put in ponds for any reason. I did it and the tanins of the fresh oak killed everything that I put in. It turned the water black. I had to pump it dry and let the summer sun dry the oak. When it dried, I burnt it and removed the ashes..

If the oaks are grown on a bit of sandy soil no one will want them other than fire wood. Oak is very good at pulling sand up into the lumber and it stays there in the tree forever.

I have seen it too turn water black. I have also seen it turn my hands black every red Oak staircase I build.

Cheers Don.

I have a bunch of oak in my pond, I have a slight problems with the tannin's but its not too bad, several pretty good sized brush piles inside the pond perimeters, mostly oak, under water now, I cleared and logged just enough of the pond surface area that I needed for borrowing clay to build the dam,, several acres in the back, up a couple of points, have still got standing timber in it, the pond is just over a yr old and has been full for about 6 months, water has a slight brownish tint but still have several ft of visibility. I was able to sell several thousands dollars worth of logs out of the area so was definitely worth logging, and the cut stumps weren't a real big problem when you are digging down past the base, root ball, anyway to borrow dirt for the dam, then it doesn't take much to roll them out of the way, I left all my stumps in the pond.

This must work with bicycles, too.

Very cool picture! Would be interesting to know who set it up in the tree.