Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Selecting a site Renovated old farmstead(pic heavy)

From what I know, usually it's done by oil and gas exploration companies such as Chesapeake Energy or Range Resources(my wells). Typically, a gas company would want somewhere around 50-100 acres of land to drill. Sometimes they accomplish this by pooling several tracts of property to make one management unit. If a well is drilled and several properties are involved, royalty payments(usually 1/8th) will be split according to how much land an individual owns in a unit. The oil and gas company will own the well until it no longer is productive at which time they will usually cap the well or sell it to the landowner(usually very cheap) to get rid of liability. I know a couple of people who bought slow wells for $1 and who have not only been able to get free gas for their homes but usually a neighbor or 2 as well.

I'm a little further east than you but there is a big formation called the Marcellus(10k ft) that extends from southern NY to W.V. and includes Ohio and Pa. Lots of new drilling going on. Since the implementation of horizontal drilling, there's also been a number of these deep 'Shale' wells being drilled from Texas to the eastern seaboard.


You might want to check your deed to see if you own any oil, gas or mineral rights. You may own some but have a current lease from a utility or exploration company.

rrroae awesome work on both the pad and pond, congrats on a killer place.

B-ski believe me there is nothing FREE about a gas well. We are in the middle of the Barnett shale here in Texas and have a well of our own. Before any of you guys or gals sign a O&G lease agreement please contact me. I learned the hard way and have lost the rights to my property don't let it happen to you. In Texas mineral rights superseded surfaces rights. There is also momentary value to be had. I lost on that deal too.
Just beware if you are approached about any type of O&G. Hire an O&G attorney. As for using free gas from a well that was common practice in the old days, My grandparents had a gas well on their land which provided fuel for the local town and they used it themselves. However when wells were drilled in our area a couple of years ago the O&G companies would not agree to letting the landowners tap into the gas lines for home use because of liability reasons. The raw gas from a well can be very dangerous used in a house. It is odorless and tasteless in its natural state. If you spring a leak you would never know it until it is too late.

Rockytopper, what rights to your property did you lose??


I know their are some really shady 'Landmen' out there who go around getting gas leases and reselling them to oil and gas companies. It happens and from what I hear, it's not uncommon. As Rocky said, ALWAYS use an attorney who has experience with oil, gas and mineral rights.

In late 2008 early 2009, landowners were getting upwards of $3,000 an acre here in PA just for signing up with a gas exploration company. This was in addition to royalties of up to 1/4 and yearly lease fees for undrilled wells. This has tapered off since the drop in NG prices but it hasn't stopped the influx of dishonest landmen who are going around getting unaware landowners to sell their gas rights for pennies on the dollar so they can turn around and sell them for huge profits to the oil and gas exploration companies.

Forgot to add, the gas from our well still produces an odor and you can always buy gas detectors to monitor for any leaks.

I got taken by the land man as did many of us in my area. Because I signed a lease with the O&G company they can now destroy my property at will and I can't do anything about it. Keep in mind they haven't done anything to me yet but they have a right too. I would never ever do it again. I'm just saying don't be fooled with the pot of gold they tell you is awaiting if you just sign here. There are many negative things associated with having O&G in your neighborhood. Perhaps laws pertaining to surface vs mineral rights are different up north.

rrroae if your smelling something and your gas is coming directly untreated from a local well it isn't natural gas your smelling. The common rotten egg smell that most people smell is added to the gas when it is treated after it leaves the well so that leaks can be detected. Below are links to the disaster that lead lawmakers to pass laws requiring producers to add an odor to the gas. The New london school house in rusk county was totally distroyed in 1937. http://www.hilliard.ws/nlpics.htm
& http://www.texasescapes.com/DEPARTMENTS/...sionAMD1201.htm

rrroae, before you add pike to your pond, check out this link: http://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/pike.html Straight from Pond Boss magazine... Northern pike usually aren't the best fish for smaller ponds. Unless you just want a few pike and not much else.

Or, you can check out a more recent PB article that recommends pike for ponds with overcrowded bass populations, and it was written by the same author who wrote the ealier article disrecommending them:

http://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/walleye-bass-perch.html


Years ago I stocked 20 - yes, 20 - 12" northern pike into a pond that might be three acres total in size, and which at the time was morbidly overpopulated with green sunfish; I stocked 40 yearling LMB that same year, and a year later 75 6" walleye (the pond has lots of water over 20' feet deep, some holes over 30'). The pond is an old phosphate pit and thus very fertile, so it probably carries more fish per acre than the average pond; but the pike didn't decimate the population of the pond, anything but; within three or four years the pond had some of the best LMB fishing, and bluegill fishing, of any pond I've ever fished, very large specimens of both species, and plenty of them. My best friend caught his personal best LMB, almost eight pounds; numerous LMB in the four- to six-pound range were caught; and my grandfather lost one that probably would've gone in the mid-teens - and these were northern-strain largemouth, not FLA's. A 36" NP was caught somewhere around that time, and a couple years after that a nine-pound walleye was caught from the pond.

Also, the article linked to above is anything but an exhaustive study - no data is given, and it would seem to be clear that none was known, about what the pond contained, if anything, other than the pike and green sunfish, at earlier dates, i.e. it's very possible that there was never a large population of green sunfish, or anything else; there's no evidence at all that bluegill or largemouth either one were ever even present in the pond. So to conclude that pike will invariably clean out a pond with bass and bluegill, based on a pond that may never have had either species, is not very sound.

Lastly, the article clearly states that in every body of water studied other than ones in which pike were present at extremely high densities (overpopulated), average bass size increased significantly with the presence of pike, and in most of the BOW studied, average bluegill size was high as well.

AWESOME! I'm very jealous.

I am just simply saying be careful in stocking NP into a pond. It's 1.5 acres, not a lot of room for a climax predator like NP. In ponds that size, manual harvest is a more controlled solution and not nearly as hard to do as it is with a larger body of water such as a 5+ acre pond. If 4 NP can decimate a 3 acre pond, I suspect it can occur much easier in a pond half that size. In the article it mentions that NP compete with anglers eating lots of 8"-10" YP. They're also going to eat a lot of other harvestable sized panfish. Just a simple word of caution. Each pond owner can do as they wish, it is their pond....

This is a new pond where the owner rrroae has said what he is stocking (" I think for now I'll just start off with largemouths, bluegill and some walleye to go along with golden shinners and minnies and we'll go from there."). Not the right situation for NP.

I read both links several times and there is nothing inconsistent in them. The author is careful about what he states and does not change his opinion. NP are a tool limited in their proper use and only with knowledge of the possible good and bad outcomes and how to deal with them. I suggest that if anyone is thinking of using NP in a pond that they carefully read those links as well as what the author and other disinterested people here have said.

If you go back and read the entire thread, a couple posts before he mentioned the stocking combination you allude to, he listed his species of interest in order of preference, and NP was first. I would not have even mentioned them for a new pond otherwise; it would seem a pretty reasonable suggestion to someone who said they're the species he's most interested in having in his pond.

I would think that the advice of someone who has actual firsthand experience with the stocking of pike in a pond, and a smaller one at that, would be at least as valuable as that of people who have no experience whatsoever stocking them and only have knowledge of them from what they've read. But that's just me. I don't advise pond owners who ask about stocking trout in their ponds because I've never done it.

I'm thinking of stocking bighead carp. Perhaps I should call up the state of Arkansas for advice. hehehehehe

Beautiful place! House looks amazing, but I can't imagine how much work that must have been. Pond looks very nice. I'm in my mid 20's now, and would kill to have a place like yours in 20 years or so. I think it's cool that you are more or less "off the grid" with those gas wells. Do you have a generator to supplement your electricity?

If you're anxious to start fishing, maybe you could consider seasonal stocking of some rainbow trout? From what I've read, they shouldn't put too much pressure on your forage base as it is being established if you throw trout food into the pond regularly.

Txelen, yes we have a small Honda generator to recharge when the batteries get low. Right now, we can go without sun for about 3 days before we need to recharge.

As for fish, I'm going to keep it simple until I understand the process a bit better. Largemouths and bluegill sounds nice and easy.