My new fishing hole is almost finished. Been working on it for a year now. Here are a few pics. We dammed up the creek a month ago, and there is already over 15' of water in the lake.

I tried to add pics, but may have done it wrong.

Looks good, congratulations. About how many surface acres are you expecting it to be when it is full?

Looking good Lynyrd!

Lynrd, the bottom looks like a heckuva mess, just about right.

Lookin good.

It should be about 10 acres when full. I'll be stocking bait fish next week. This area was solid timber a year ago. Loggers came in last March and cut the timber.

Looks great. Remember to post pictures when it is full.

Looks like a beauty keep posting pictures when you can.

Well done.

I'm flabbergasted! I guess the saying that everything is bigger in Texas is so true! The scope of this project is hard for me to grasp but it is going to be awesome when it is done. Keep the pictures coming and congratulations!

Here's a couple of pics I took today. The water came up so fast my welder is having to work from a flat bottom boat to try and finish the framework on the pier.

Did a GPS plot today and it showed just an uuch under 10 acres. That's the first attempt to measure the surface area. There are 13,600 yds of dirt in the dam.

Dave, I wanted the bottom to be a mess! I pushed over 200 stumps that I dug up with the track hoe back into the bottom for structure. May get a hook or 12 hung up, but the fish should like it.

Lynyrd,
Very impressive undertaking you've got here. Please continue to post pics as your project nears completion.

Lynrd, I love it.

good work great job

Wow water is coming up fast. Everything is white here with snow still. Mild spell coming this week with some highs for the day of +8C about 48F.

Lynard. looks great!

What are your plans for grass?

Looks great,
Did anyone give you $%#^% when you stopped the creek?

A couple of my neighbors who are friends have razzed me a bit, but that's all. Everyone down stream knew I was gonna hold up the water for a bit. With the rain we are getting now, it will be flowing through the siphon pipe in a couple of days. Thursday will be 5 weeks since I stopped the creek, and it will be flowing again by Thursday.

The 12 inch spillway pipe kicked into full siphon mode about 6PM today. I've never seen one flow before! I had planned for it, hoped it would work, but dang it's really something to see that rascal pump. The water was landing about 15 feet from the end of the pipe. With all the rain we've had, I still expect the emergency spillway to overflow tonight. I have 530 acres of watershed, so my problem is more getting rid of water than catching water. The emergency spillway is 40' wide with 4' of freeboard above the bottom of the spillway. I think that iw needed with this much watershed, even with a 12" siphon.

Here is two pictures of just before it went into siphon, and one in full siphon.

Now that's a sight for sore eyes!
Love it!
G/

Congrats Lynyrd. This weather really hit at a great time for you.

That is a sight for dry eyes--

I made a couple of small mistakes on the siphon. It did not come on by itself. In fact, it was vapor locked and would not let any water through at all. I had to bleed the air pressure off of it before it would start. But, I know what I need to do to fix it so that it will self prime, and it won't be a hard fix.

What kind of max depths will you have at full pool? The deeper the better.

Average depth in front of the dam is 17 feet. The creek channel is 6 to 10 feet deeper. I will also have about 3 acres of water in the shallow end that won't get over 5 feet deep.

Just a little update. I put in 15,000 FHM, 7,000 CNBG, and 700 CC this week. I'll get the LMB in June and the BCP in October. Not sure about the shad yet. Water has been flowing through the spillway pipe non stop for a month now. It's going to be interesting to see how far into the summer the creek flow keeps up with evaporation. I still haven't finished the pier yet. Most of the time it's been too muddy to get a truck down to the pier with materials. I really need some dry weather to plant grass and finish the pier.

I read this forum for countless hours before starting my project, and have put many, many things I learned here into my build. Thanks to everyone for sharing your knowledge.

After a year of doing nothing but work on the new lake, I'm looking forward to have a day or two off every now and then to go fishing.

Hello Lynyrd........... I'm curious as to what the problem with the siphon was. Was the high point vent clogged, or was the vent pipe routed too deep into the pond? I'm thinking that vapor lock shouldn't occur in an open ended siphon overflow regardless of whether or not the vent is working, but after looking at your pictures I did notice the long length of riser pipe at the discharge end of the siphon. Depending on piping elevations, I'm guessing that this long length of riser might possibly create enough head pressure at the outlet so as to allow an airlock to occur at certain pool elevations, should the high point vent become clogged.............. Just a thought. Like I said, I'm curious.

btw: NICE project, and congrats on the rain.

I originally had the air vent pipe too low in the water. My idea was that I wanted the siphon to continue to run until it had draw the water down to just below the bottom of the main pipe going through the dam. As the pipe filled with water, and as you noted because of the 6 foot extension on the outlet side of the pipe, air could not get out either the vent, or the bottom of the siphon. I had to open the primer cap to vent the air. There was quite a bit of pressure in there when I pulled the cap off.

I have since raised the level of the intake on the vent pipe. I don't know where it needs to wind up yet. The lake has not risen high enough in the last month to make the siphon kick on. The 12" pipe is handling the normal water flow.

I've got a picture somewhere of my new set up, but what I did was add an adjustable pipe underneath the air vent pipe. This will allow me to fine tune the height of the air vent.

Here is the first satellite image of my new lake. There was a pre-existing small pond I built several years ago. You can see it in the lower right portion of the picture. What looks like a road across the water is actually the dam of the small pond. There is a difference of about 6 feet between the two water levels.

The CC's I stocked in April are already 8 to 12 inches long and there are so many CNB spawning beds you can't count them. LMB stocked in June are 6 to 8 inches long already. I've seen a few jump completely out of the water chasing minnows.

GPS shows the surface are to right about 10 acres. I would really like to hear some expert advice on whether or not my 10 acre lake is big enough for black crappie?

Someone asked about my siphon pipe. Here is the valve set up. There are two 2" ball valves that allow me to prime the pipe with a pump if I ever need to drain the lake down some. The main pipe is 12" oil well casing. There is a trash screen on the bottom of the main pipe that is built out of 1/4" woven wire mesh with 2" holes in the mesh.

Me and a friend built this siphon set up. It comes on by itself after I tweaked the height of the air vent pipe. If I did the math correctly, it pumps about 4,000 GPM when in full siphon mode. My spillway would not hold up to erosion if it were not for this siphon.

Beautiful lake. Congratulations!

I'm no BC expert, but I thought Overton was looking at a hybrid crappie that spawns less than white or black, thus reducing the boom and bust cycle problems so common with them in smaller BOW. Also, there was some talk a few years ago that HSB did a good job keeping down crappie numbers, though I haven't heard much lately.

To me Crappie are over rated and for all the problems they cause they really are! IMO BG and CNBG of 9 and 10 inches fight just as well as a 12 inch crappie and they taste just as good! And not as many issues with them.

I know I don't want to tick off all the crappie lovers but my 10 in gills fight just as hard if now harder then crappie and taste gooooooooood!!! So why go through all the trouble for them.... Just saying?

RC

RC51, I'll keep your comments in mind. IF I put BC in in will be this October. I've never seen 10 inch CNBG. I put 7K of them in my lake in April that were 1"-3" long, and they've been actively spawning all summer. Seen the beds and the young. If I could get them to grow to 10" that would be awesome. I figured their main purpose was food for the LMB.

I'll make a disclaimer and say that I absolutely love crappie so I am partial to them.... if you love crappie your lake looks like it will grow them quite nicely...

Id stock about 1000 black crappie and harvest their offspring!!

Lynyrd,

They do get to be 9, 10 and even 11 inches. In some case 12. Here are a couple of mine from this last year. This is after 4 years. The one my boy is holding is 1 pound exactly we weighed it right at 10 inches. The other one is 11 inch 1.5 pounds!! Biggest one I have caught so far on my pond.

The cool thing about CNBG is they do feed your bass and they can get big enough to eat and don't cause as many issues. You get a win, win situation with BG and CNBG! That's just me tho. Like n8ly said your pond is big enough to handle them to some extent but.... 4 years from now who knows what kind of a mess you could have.....

Keep in mind it's not that I don't like Crappie they are good! But you have to ask yourself after reading all the stuff out here about the problems with crappie is it worth it? Once you put them in a 10 acre pond and it doesn't go right good luck trying to fix it later!

RC

If it were me and it's not I would put about 200 HSB in there for a bonus fish! Now that would be fun once they got to be 5 or 6 pounds!! I've also heard they are not bad tasting either as long as you get the red strip out of the meat!

RC

I haven't been on the forum in a while, but I wanted to give an update. We have been catching LMB up to 9 lbs and CC up to 10 lbs. The CNBG are plentiful but small. I never stocked and BC and so far I haven't regretted that. I still work 50+ hours/wk so time to fish does not come as often as I would like. But the fishing is good most any day. In 2019 we took about 300 lbs (live weight) of fish out of the pond. That's going to have to increase now that the fish are getting big. I don't want the LMB to get over populated. I've got to make more time to fish, or find more helpers.

I just ordered a Hotwoods Aluma Sport 612 from their place in Emory and it should be here in a couple of weeks. My 9 year old grandson is going to spend the week with me on spring break in March, and we are going to break in the new mini pontoon. I hope that week is a preview of my retirement years!

Glad to hear about the progress!

Are there a vast of range of LMB? What are your plans for the pond going forward?

Lynyrd....congrats on your pond's progress.

Although your pond is more than twice as big as mine, they have sort of the same shape.



ps:
You'll love your new Hotwoods mini-pontoon.
Mike will take care of you in Emory.
Just finally finished the boat slip for mine.
I have Overton's Hybrid Crappie in mine, but I am not a technically correct kind of guy.

The LMB that we catch range in size from 1/2 pound to 9 lbs. And there seem to be no real size class that is most common.

As for my plans, I'm happy with the mix I have right now. I just want to take enough out each year so that it doesn't get over populated. And that is going to be tough. I can only eat so many fish!

Wow, almost the same shape to our ponds. Mine has about 5 acres of water that ranges from 2 to 6 foot deep (except for the creek channel). And with 560 acres of watershed my problem is not getting or holding water, it's getting rid of water. My spillway pipe flows 10 months out of the year.

And I'll agree that Mike at Hotwoods seems to be a solid guy. I hope the little pontoon works as good for me as I think it will.

You're gonna love it.

FYI...thus far the Hotwoods solar charger has worked great for my trolling motor..but I'm only out there on weekends.

Dang Zep! Your dock is awesome. My place is a bit more low rent than yours. And I can see that you got a much bigger mini-pontoon than I did. Do you have the 716? I love your setup.

I got a solar charger for mine, but eventually I am going to run electricity to my pier and then I will put on an on board charger.

Zep, I really like the way the engineered wood is laid out on the pier. Great idea!!

Now I need to look closer at those boats. Seems to be a better work platform than a flat bottom jon boat.

You guys are evil.... I have been looking at mini pontoons for hours!

Lynyrd yeah it's a 716...I'm going to have dock electricity too, but gosh electricity always scares me on a dock...the electrician is not finished yet, but I told him I wanted 2 GFCI plugs...one out on the dock and one where dock connects to land....even-though I suppose you don't need to do that on one line..but I'm paranoid...I worked with a guy that got electrocuted in a pond.


Thanks Scott. I finally found a "low-flake-factor" dock builder. The work platform idea is the reason I didn't go with more permanent seats..although they offer some that pop-out. The Hotwoods boat is very stable and ready for work with Christmas trees, cinder blocks, and pole chain-saws for trimming limbs hanging over water edge.

There is definitely nothing low rent about that dock and boat am loving that setup!

Zep, I looked at their site and I love the background in the pictures when you scroll through the images of the 612 Model.

They say they will float in 10" water, but don't mention the draft. What's your experience? I see you have the 715.

Great looking boat and dock.

Yeah Scott when they delivered a floating dock to me a couple of years ago they asked if they could do photo-shoot at our place.

Just an FYI: I was not compensated for the photo-shoot and received no discount on my boat, have no interest or relationship with Hotwoods

I have the 716 model...my pond is 3.5-4 acres so I only have a troll motor...no gas motor....to be honest we've only been out on our boat 3 times for a few minutes...with the holidays, weather, boat slip construction, and a surprise grand-baby just have not fully broke it in yet. We plan to get on it more this weekend. The dog loves it!

Thanks John!

I've had a 15' flat bottom with a 25HP Evinrude for over twenty years. I've been using it on my 10 acre pond, but it's overkill. It's also not very good for cleaning out wood duck boxes, trimming limbs, destroying a beaver lodge, spraying weeds, etc. All of which I have "tried" to do from my flat bottom. I think the Hotwoods pontoon with a flat aluminum deck is going to make all of those chores much easier. It should also be a good fishing platform.

The big plus for me is that I won't have to take it out of the water. No more launching on my mud ramp. Just walk out on the pier, get in it, and go. I'm going to be putting pads on my dock this weekend so it won't rub.

I understand what you mean. With my watershed, my dock can go underwater on a 6" rain. I will not have any power outlets out on the pier. Just a pole on the bank. I'll put some GFI plugs up high enough that they wont go under water.

I understand why you didn't get mounted front seats on your pontoon. The flat work space will come in handy. I opted for the all weather folding seats that are mounted to the deck, but come off very easy. There will be times when the front of my deck is open like yours.