Pond renovation saga - 03/22/08 01:27 AM
Watching the forum over the past several months I've learned a lot. However I have to say I underestimated how tough it can be to renovate a 40 year old pond. Would have never believed how long it takes for silt to dry...FOREVER!
Thought I'd share a few pics of the progress:
[img]
[/img]
This is the main pool of the pond when we first bought the place two years ago (and my son who can't wait to fish the place!). Most was about 3-4' deep, with another quarter acre or so out of view that looked more like a wetlands as the depth was <18".
[img]
[/img]
Last spring we breached the dam to begin the drying process so we could excavate and reshape the banks. 35 years of heavy grazing and cattle traffic had created a lot of erosion around the banks.
This is the pond after 9 months of drying. Looks dry right? As many on the forum would have predicted it was bone dry...to exactly 18"...then mush, lots of wet mush.
We've made a valiant effort to excavate and get back some good depth. We also plan to raise the pipe to add another 12-18" of depth. It's not as deep as I would like, but we have a good 15-20% that should be at 10-12' and another 20% or so that will hopefully stay around 8'. I say hopefully because you can see that there were some places we couldn't reach without burying the excavator so we cut shelves and left an island or two that at full pool should be 4-5' deep. My hope is that those will hold when we refill and not spread evenly on the pond floor later.
Although we're all ready to load this thing with Condello bluegill and start fishing this summer, we want to do this right and it looks like we're going to need a dry summer before we can do the finish grading and reshape the banks. Guess the extra time will give me a chance to add some structure and get more ideas from the pond bosses! Any and all ideas/feedback welcome. This is obviously my first time doing this and I'd rather that the next time is done when my kids have kids.
Thought I'd share a few pics of the progress:
[img]
[/img] This is the main pool of the pond when we first bought the place two years ago (and my son who can't wait to fish the place!). Most was about 3-4' deep, with another quarter acre or so out of view that looked more like a wetlands as the depth was <18".
[img]
[/img] Last spring we breached the dam to begin the drying process so we could excavate and reshape the banks. 35 years of heavy grazing and cattle traffic had created a lot of erosion around the banks.
This is the pond after 9 months of drying. Looks dry right? As many on the forum would have predicted it was bone dry...to exactly 18"...then mush, lots of wet mush.
We've made a valiant effort to excavate and get back some good depth. We also plan to raise the pipe to add another 12-18" of depth. It's not as deep as I would like, but we have a good 15-20% that should be at 10-12' and another 20% or so that will hopefully stay around 8'. I say hopefully because you can see that there were some places we couldn't reach without burying the excavator so we cut shelves and left an island or two that at full pool should be 4-5' deep. My hope is that those will hold when we refill and not spread evenly on the pond floor later.
Although we're all ready to load this thing with Condello bluegill and start fishing this summer, we want to do this right and it looks like we're going to need a dry summer before we can do the finish grading and reshape the banks. Guess the extra time will give me a chance to add some structure and get more ideas from the pond bosses! Any and all ideas/feedback welcome. This is obviously my first time doing this and I'd rather that the next time is done when my kids have kids.
