We just put in our third pond, it will be primarily for family entertainment swimming and fishing. We will be building a house right next to this one so my wife has had a lot of say on the esthetics of it and I kind of wanted to keep her happy...after all I am getting a nice big pond!

Conservatively this pond is a little over an acre prolly closer to an acre and a half with the deep end being a little over 20' shallow end around 15' with a beach sloping down into it and a concrete dock. My wife was very specific about the shallower half of the pond being structure free because of the swimming and that most of the things we add in the deep end being deep enough to not ever affect swimmers. I was OK with that.

I didn't want any structure shallower than 8' just in case someone would dive in off the side of pond, and I didn't want anything wood that could decompose over time making the water dirty or changing the structure. Plan is to treat the water in this pond with some kind of Aquashade and a little copper sulfate to keep it a little tinge of blue and hopefully pretty clean.

So we scoured this site and the internet for ideas of what we could put in or make ourselves and found some really cool projects to work on. Wanted something that big fish could cruse and suspend on and provide cover for little fish and crawdads. We will be stocking the pond with a variety of species with the forage fish going in the year before predator fish are introduced.

We built some of the plastic trees anchored with cinder blocks and sakcrete along with a few buckets and tubing/edging, split a couple plastic trash cans and ran tubing through anchored with cinder blocks, used pavers and bricks for crawdad hotels, made a cinder block wall, dumped 18 ton of cabbage head sized stone in a pile, made a wall of old clay tile 4' high, used some miscellaneous plastic tile and concrete culvert pieces with cinder blocks to make a little castle. Anything needing wired to blocks was done with thick stainless wire.

The bigger structures were kept pretty deep, the brick/paver structures on slope should be around 12' with the split trash cans being around 8'-9'.
We also had our contractor dig a ledge into one back corner that will be at 6' deep when pond is full that is 10' wide by 30 yards long ,we will cover that with sand and ad some flatter paver structures to it out from the bank.

This is how it turned out;

Nice.

Nice work !! Like the thought process. Will you have aeration? If not will oxygen be available at the structure depth (thermocline question) all year ?

There will have to be dead spots at certain times of year with the depth we have. I want to put a windmill in for aeration, have to convince the wife on that one yet.

A couple of things.

Without aeration the muck will build up quicker than with aeration. The fish will have a much smaller area of the pond that they can utilize during the summer, and a few years down the road once the muck builds up you can be more susceptible to a fish kill with a weather event that causes a rapid turnover in the pond, mixing the anoxic bottom water with the oxygenated surface water. It doesn't take much H2S to mix with the oxygenated water to kill fish. I would add a bottom diffuser aeration system, grid based not windmill. Windmills are too inconsistent in their aeration, and they are a royal PITA to service.

Without aeration and without habitat for the fish in shallower area (away from the swimming area) your fish population will suffer. Your YP won't have a place to spawn, your small fish won't have a place to hide, your bass will be constantly swimming around looking for food and will be more like marathon runners than couch potatoes. Having cover in the pond that the fish can use every month of the year also makes it easier to fish in the pond. You want roughly 20-25 percent of the ponds surface area in cover for the fish. When putting the cover in the shallower water, make a line or two of cover going to the deep water. The fish will use that as a sort of highway when transitioning from deep to shallow water.

I would not continually add Copper Sulfate. The invertebrates on the bottom of the pond don't like copper, and the copper will build up in the bottom sediment over time. Using dye is fine to limit light transmission to cut down on weed and plant growth, but it also partially cuts out the bottom of the food chain. To mitigate that, you should be supplementally feeding the fish. (see my other post about your pond)

I think for structure to be its most effective is when it's in water 6 feet or less. That's where most of the feeding and breeding will take place. Awesome looking pond though, can't wait to see future pics of it.

Steve, that is true, but up here where we get ice over the ponds for a length of time and the fish retreat to the deepest part of the pond, then cover there is just as important as cover in shallow water during the Spring/Summer/Fall.

Let me just re-clarify our goals with this pond there seems to be a little confusion. The priorities with this pond are aesthetics, swimming, fishing in that order.
I do appreciate all the knowledge of those who have fishing as the top priority in their ponds, very interesting stuff.

Depending on goals (and subject to them) , structure at all depths is a good idea. Even in the south deep structure will be used for many months out of the year (just not when DO is low). Structure below the thermocline will not be used during the period of low DO.
Avoid long term used of CUSO4 - only in emergency conditions with full knowledge of what to do and the consequences.

Hey, I didn't really think of that. Good point. However, during the winter when fish are pretty dormant/slugging/inactive, does deep structure matter that much? I used to ice fish when I lived in Upstate NY, particularly for YP, BG and CP, and we always had the best luck on some barren flats with no structure, or on weedlines. Anecdotal of course.

The ice fishing I did last year, all the bites came within 5-10 feet of brush piles or other cover in the deep part of the ponds.

Pic of the split trash can structures just to show up close




Last of the fish structure, we made them this past weekend and put under new dock, made the plastic trees half size so it shouldn't bother swimming.

Structure, shade, and soaring Greek columns!

The bass that take up residence under your concrete dock are going to think they are living in the Ritz-Carlton!

Buddy was doing some ditching and had some leftover 6" tile so I cut it into 4' long pieces and wired it to some of the structure we had that wasn't under water yet. Should work for CC hidey holes and spawning, also will be shooting some pea gravel onto the ledge and will put the rest of the load where it slopes down fast from beach.

While everything is frozen good I am getting a truck driver with a "sling" chute on his truck to bring out a load a pea gravel and shoot it about 6" deep on top of the ledge the pond builder put in, it is easy to see now with the snow on top of it. Ledge is around 10'-12' wide, thirty yards long and should be close to 5'-6' deep when pond is full. The plan is to ad a few large flat stone structures on it and with the pea gravel hopefully fish will spawn on it. The other half of the dump truck load I will just have dumped in a pile on beach area, spread it later and it will be covered with sand in spring.

Just a thought. I don't like to put all my eggs in one spawning basket. It might be a good idea to id another location (shallower than 6 ') and where there is no/little siltation and add some gravel there as well. Does not have to be a big area - 8 ft X 8 ft will work.

I agree with ewest. If you want the pea gravel to last longer (and not sink down into the pond bottom over time) put a layer of geotextile fabric under it.

Finally had pea gravel put in on the spawning structure ledge yesterday morning. I had never seen the sling truck in action before, very interesting. Ended up with 9"-12" deep over most of it, after it settles and water gets over it should be just right for fish spawning. Will add some SM spawning structure on it.

Also shot 2" of pea gravel over the beach are as a base, will be putting 4"-6" of sand over it after it settles in and the water starts to get on it.

That looks more like 1-2” limestone rock versus pea gravel . Looks like they did a good job putting it out

I agree with Pat that they did a great job of placing the rock!

Did the erosion evident on your banks occur before you had the large rock installed?

P.S. Hopefully the recent storms in your area are sending some water to your ponds.

The pea gravel is on the ledge under the wood duck box?

The stone was put in around the pond as soon as it was finished last summer.

Oops saw it after posting…. Very nice

Thanks.

I was hoping your band of large rock would have diffused the water flow pathways enough that the runoff did not create those erosive channels in your side slopes so quickly.

Dang, moving water is impressive in its erosive power!

Still hoping your pond is full soon - so it can switch over to just aquatic conditions.