Pond Boss Forums INTRO New Forum Member Introduction Drought

Envying you guys who live where it rains. We are in an extended drought.

Was reading new member B Storms post about building a pond with 30 acres of runoff. That sounds great ASSUMING it rains. According to a neighbors automated weather system program, we have had approx 6 inches in the last 12 months. None forecasted. My spring fed creek dried up 6 months ago.My Texas Hunter feeder won’t throw far enough to hit water. According to the dam overflow pipe I’m about 7 ft low. I hand tossed some pellets and a few fish came to feed. I’ll have to restock but have been here before but not this extreme.

My small 1/4 acre green sunfish pond is about gone. It’s a mile from the house but enough water for a few of them to stay alive.

But, my Grandson had a great idea. He said we could haul the feeder down to where the water is. That ought to bring a frog strangler rain and it would make good fish structure. Buying a new feeder might be a good trade off.

Need to search the web for some improved rain dance steps. But, according to a Cherokee I know, that’s never worked for him. However for a fee or maybe beer, he said he would gladly drop by.

It's easy to move a feeder. My new lake is about 3/4ths full and I've moved my Sweeney feeder a couple of times by myself.

Dave, it's easy to move a feeder. A customer near AL has a 400# TH feeder mounted on a small trailer. He leaves the trailer and feeder by the lake, if it has to be moved, he hooks it to the 4-wheeler and moves it, full of feed or not.

Scott, moving my feeder isn’t a concern. The potential issue is that a good storm might flood it.
I see that as about 1% chance. I’m in the country now and tossed some feed by hand. Not much action.

If it ever rains again, I’ll have to start over for the third time in about 30 years.

Being on the trailer gets it up off the ground higher, and makes it easier to move if it ever does storm. Move the chocks, hook up to the ATV and drive.

Yeah, but I don’t live there. I have found that most Texas droughts are ended by floods. Good way to get a submerged feeder. I doubt that I have enough fish left to worry about.

Yep. I've had a couple that took a bath, so I've got both of my feeders above the overflow water line.

We're not down a huge amount, just 1 1/2-2 feet, but the issue I'm dealing with is the inability to treat the weeds. I've had 2 rounds of blue green algae, and both were during stagnate water. The lack of flow through this year kept me from spraying, and all the progress I had made is gone. I'm back to square one, and lost 4 years of weed control progress. I double downed on grass carp this spring, and hopefully they'll help control coontail next year.

My pond is down around 2'. We got a couple of rains that totaled maybe 3" in the last six weeks or so but it didn't help the pond much as the soil sucked it all up. Turned the fields from brown back to green though.

At the beginning of the year I was encouraged to actually have vegetation in my pond...unfortunately, like other recent years it has all disappeared. Still have the Bull Rush but the water level no longer reaches them.

The CPNBG, BC and LMB population still seem to be healthy.

Series of entrained thunderstorms at our house have dropped 4.5" inches of rain, with more on the way.

Our farm is 40 miles due west, and it has received .30".

Think the state will let me run gutter extensions for 40 miles?

We're getting some of that this morning. Need it to stick around for three or four days to really do some good.

Another feeder moving problem is the terrain. With the drastic drop (extreme drought), no flat place to put it down the hill. The dozen or so cedars that I installed about 3 or 4 months ago for fry and small fish cover are now about 7 ft up on the shore. The Tposted lines of cord that I installed as cormorant excluders are are about 8 to 10 ft above water level. They started out at 2 to 3 ft. above water level. I don’t live there so I’m trying to get there every 3 or 4 days to toss feed.

My 1/4 acre, approx 10 ft deep pond, is now probably about 2 to 3 ft deep. Not many of my green sunfish coming to feed. I expect it to totally dry up. About 16 inches of water remaining.

Yep, they are right when they label my area as extreme drought.The spring fed creek has dried up. But, I’ve heard that every drought is broken by a flood. We’ll see. In the 35 to 40 years that I’ve owned the place, I’ve seen more than one drought.

I’ve told Grandsons that the water holes are off limits during deer season. It just wouldn’t be fair.

Scott and Alan have seen my place but never like this.

All three of my ponds dried up. I don't think any of my neighbor's ponds even have water. It may be 3 miles west of my place to the nearest water. (There is a serious dam on that pond, so I assume it has deep water.)

I deepened one of my dry groundwater ponds this fall - just so the wildlife in the area would have a water source!

I need to get my cameras up, just to observe how the wildlife copes with a drought of this severity.

According to a neighbor, Got a dang good 2 day, off and on, rain. I’ll be driving up there tomorrow to check my almost virgin rain gauge.

Neighbors weather station says 2.85 inches now. My land is higher than his and clouds split at my place. He gets more rain, even though only about 1/4 mile apart, than I do.

My pond is so low it makes me sick. It hasn't been this low, since it was first this high. I don't have a lot of hope until the trees all go dormant and ground is frozen. That seems to be the only time I get really good run off.
I always pray for rain but now that we're building the new house I have conflicting feelings about rain. I guess I'm a winner either way now 🤷. Lol!

My ponds are at the lowest they have been since initial filling. One is down about 43 inches, the other about 25 inches or so. The first one still has almost 7 feet of water in the deepest part, the second has about 5 feet. The water has cooled now, so it holds more oxygen, but I slowed my feedings to only about two to three per week.

Storms gave me about 3 inches of rain. The spring fed creek has water but isn’t really running.

Both ponds came up. The 1/4 acre one at the back of the property are up about a foot. The bigger one came up about 25 ft.
It really helped but are a log way to go.

Edit: should have said it came up 2.5 ft; not 25 ft.

Optimist - My pond is half full.

Pessimist - My pond is half empty.

Congrats on the new house build! Are you dried in yet?

Another PB regular is also completing a new home now. I hope both of you are able to get everything completed in a timely fashion!

My pond is half empty.

I checked depths the other day. One tiny spot was 9', the rest 8' or shallower. We dug it out to 22' deep in 2008, then just as we finished Hurricane Ike rolled through the area washing approx. 24" of dirt/sand back into the deepest part. Over the years another 12"-18" have accumulated.

That will give you an idea just how much water is NOT in my pond.....

If I would have listened to some people that said "You only need a 10'-12' deep pond in this area" I'd have no fish and maybe no water at all..........

Engineer: This pond has a 100% safety factor.

Thanks FishinRod, we are just starting, so the rain will slow them down. The foundation is in and they waterproofed and backfilled. A few days ago, they delivered the materials to start framing. Looks like everything they need to frame the walkout part of the lower level, the steel beams and supports, i-joist and subflooring for the main level. Also, some steel sheeting that I assume is to go over my vault room before they pour the concrete pad over it. I'm hoping that they will start framing this week.

We got ~2" of rainfall over the weekend. It came slow and most of it soaked in. Need that much every week until next year to get the pond back to full.

Our winter months are typically LOW precipitation (only one state west of you).

I am just hoping we hold ground this winter and then maybe we can start making back some gains next spring with some good wet weather!

Best case scenario would be a nice, big early spring rain that fell on frozen ground. That would get almost all of the water into our ponds!