Pond Boss Forums INTRO New Forum Member Introduction New here from Tyler, Texas

Hello everyone! I'm new here and wanted to offer up a quick intro. I purchased a 56 acre property in east Texas about 5 years ago. The property has a year round running creek that borders one side. Coming off of the creek is about a 1/2 acre pond. It's not very deep at 3 to 4 feet during the summer. This time of year it's probably 5 feet deep. The creek floods during the spring and the whole pasture, including the pond, is under flowing water. I have caught some nice bluegill and redbreasts in this pond and channel catfish up to about 2 pounds. There are also some bass in the pond up to about a pound and a half or so. My goal is to add some catfish spawning barrels and fish habitat. I also want to add some kind of feeder, though since it floods, this may be tricky.

I can't really stock this pond as it does flood and all of the fish would be able to just swim downstream. So, again, I mostly just want to increase habitat and spawning locations. Anyway, I suspect there will be a lot of questions from me soon!

Welcome to Pond Boss! Is there something in particular you are looking for help on?

Yeah, I plan to try and enhance the pond, both through adding onto it and by adding some catfish spawning barrels and artificial structure. I plan to first post a question asking about catfish spawning barrels. I've been kind of browsing a bit to get my legs under me first.

My creek floods about 16' above the base level on the biggest I have witnessed so far. I went out to our property to observe how that much water manifested across the land.

There were many places where the flood waters were pretty calm. How high will the waters go at your pond? How much will it be raging?

One option might be to build a small floating dock as the base for your fish feeder.

Are you allowed to increase the height of the land in the floodplain?

If so, you might consider digging out your pond and making a tall berm with the spoils. It would be relatively easy "construction wise". Don't know if it would be allowable in the regulations?

My creek comes from a spring on adjoining property and also gets quite a bit of runoff from a hilly area. Well, it gets runoff from our rare rains. We are now in a 3 year drought and this year the springs dried up. Then we got enough rain to refresh them. Without some drought breaking rain, I don’t expect it to last much longer.

Welcome!

"You never ask a man if he's from Texas. If he is, he'll decide when you deserve to know. If he isn't, you'll embarrass him."

Bonedigger, welcome to the forum. When my wife catches me buying "toys", I make a quick trip to Stanley's. That always get me off the hook. Lindale/Tyler is a nice part of TX.

Thanks everyone for the warm welcome! That's too funny about the Texas thing! I have been living here for about 25 years but am originally from South Carolina. My wife is a native Texan and my two daughters were born here too. However, I am still not allowed to call myself a Texan. The best I can claim is "transplanted Texan".

My pond will go under probably no more than 5 or 6 feet of water unless it's a really, really wet year. Then it might be a bit more. In the hottest part of the summer, it is isolated from the creek and water levels can drop, but it never goes shallower than 2.5 feet or so. I plan to post a picture when I get a chance.

Two summer ago I dug out a small section of the pond and add on a little. I still need to work on it some more and I really want to add a bit more to it. To be honest, there is no way I could isolate this pond from flooding. The way it's situated would make that impossible.