Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Selecting a site Catmandoo Pond II Started

We recently started preparing for another pond that will be 0.75 - 1 acres. We did soil samples this morning, and it all looks very good. Good topsoil, over good clay. Good watershed area. The trees are being cleared now.

The base of the dam will be a road bed that is over 100 years old. We do have to remove a 24 inch culvert at the lowest spot in the road, but that shouldn't be a problem. That may be where the drain will go through. We will cut a keyway/core trench on the inside edge of the current roadway. Lots of good top soil will get pushed into piles around the top edges.

This pond will be designed with spawning areas and hiding areas. And, we'll be able to drain it.

Unfortunately, we don't know whether we will actually get to build and enjoy the pond. As many of you know, we are still being threatened with a major power line that intends to take our entire piece of property. We just don't know when, but we can't keep our lives on hold.

Ken

Awesome!

This post is totally unacceptable.

No photos.

No topo map.

No stocking plan.

No pond contour map.

No diorama depicting probably pond life.

Not even a recipe for the new species that will be stocked.

You have 104 minutes to improve this post.

That sounds great Ken!

Did I mention there is a chance that my brother in law may want to store his Track Hoe out here? His rental fee is me using the track hoe at will. I have ideas, of course......

I think I missed the 104 minute limit -- and just where did that come from?

Here are a few photos of what will be happening. Drawings and aerial maps soon. Stocking plans too. As for critters, as long as they are tasty, they can be turned into good recipes.

This gives kind of an idea of where the dam will be. This is an old road bed. The dump truck is near the lowest point, and about over the 24-inch culvert. The top of the dam will be about at the level of the dump box.


This is taken from just behind my upper settlement pond for the main pond. It holds water throughout the year, and it is just a hole I dug with my small backhoe a few years ago.


This shows the relationship of the dam area to my main pond.


And, this is what will be used to move a lot of the dirt. After they get the stumps out, they'll push the topsoil to safe areas where we'll be able to use it after we get the dam and hole completed. They've also got a track hoe and several other movers. Lastly, they'll do the compacting with a sheeps foot roller.

Dwight -- it is great having access to equipment like this. My friends leave all kinds of things out here, plus if it is a small job and the equipment is parked here, they just do it.

Ken:

It took me a minute to think about where you were talking about, but I think it'll work perfectly. What are the plans to keep the fish in the upper pond out of the lower pond?

Looks great. Time to roll !!! Plans ?

Pond Boss Posting Regulations, Volume 4, Page 68, Paragraph 3.

Jeez don't any of you read the posting regulations?

WHAT??? I did read them! What version do you have? Mine is Revision C.3, dated August 21, 2008. Volume 4, Page 68, paragraph 3 in my version says:

You guys remind me of real life situation I ran into. A Virginia conservation officer was telling me over the phone I could not sell fish because I was a taxidermist. (In reference to selling frozen fish to taxidermits in Virginia) I asked him what year his regulation was. He said something like 1999. My copy was a revised version from 2000 or 2001 which negated his. He still wouldn't budge. Apparently he did not want to be wrong!

Stupid question Ken: I assume this is on the same property but won't be effected if they declare eminent domain on you?

Looks like a great place for a pond! Yee Haw!

Not a stupid question. Yes, our entire property will be affected if/when the project goes through. It is a very difficult situation to be in. Our lives were put on hold about 15 months ago when we got the notice that our property is directly in the path of a projected new power line. The project was again recently delayed at least into 2012. Lynda and I are close to semi-retirement. We can no longer keep delaying our future. We must move ahead.

With that said, I know that eminent domain can be a very controversial subject. I ask all Pond Boss posters to respect this and not turn this thread into a thread that gets shut down because of political controversy. I'd like to continue to post progress of what we are doing, even if we do eventually get shut down because the project is moves forward.

There is still a lot of planning for this project. We started the initial planning over two years ago. Then we got the news that began the awful delay. For a variety of reasons, I don't think we'll actually start moving dirt until August.

As I mentioned above, we did, what I consider final soil survey's yesterday. I'd done preliminary ones with my backhoe almost two years ago, and it looked pretty good then. We used a small excavator yesterday for more samples. The samples look really great -- unless we wanted to build a big house with a big drain field. There are a few seasonal springs above the pond area that should not cause any problems.

I still have to work with the county, state, and federal government. Thanks to Pond Boss, and aquaculture friends in WV, I feel I will have solid plans and have a pretty good idea of what I'm facing when I meet with them in the near future.

Although we have contour maps, we'll begin actual measurements late next week. Currently, the projected pond boundaries have been done by critical eye and a cheap rotating laser level that I've used after dark. We'll have a much better idea in the next couple of weeks of the projected size and depth. We'll also have a much better idea of how many yards of dirt we need to move.

Based on our rough measurements, we are tentatively planning full pool (standpipe height) at about of 12-feet above maximum depth. The emergency spillway will be approximately 18 inches above the top of the standpipe. The top of the dam will be approximately 36 inches above the standpipe. All of this may need to be adjusted after we do our survey, and after we talk to all of the gov't officials. I want the top of the dam to be a minimum of 12-foot wide, as it will still serve as a roadway for my tractor to get to other parts of the property for logging and hunting.

So, that is where we are today.

Congrats Ken! What are your plants for this pond fish wise?

I got kind of a surprise today. This pond project has been on hold for about a year. We expanded my settlement pond, and that is as far as we got.

There was an excavating company in our neighbor hood yesterday and today. They finished their tasks early and asked if I needed some dirt moved since they won't be moving their equipment until Monday. They had a D6 Dozer, a huge trackhoe with about a 2-1/2 yard bucket, and a big roller. I asked if they could clean some muck out of my little settlement pond.

Pictures tomorrow. My little settlement pond has grown. We haven't measured, but it will be at least 1/3 acre, maybe bigger.

This all really caught me by surprise.

THAT was a nice suprise!

What an incredible 7 days this has been.

I was really happy on Wednesday morning when I finished packing filets from 60 of the big bullheads we removed from Sunil's pond (see Regional PB Gathering in Somerset, PA).

Our trip to Sunil's followed a fun weekend, where two friends and I, joined Todd and Sunil at Sunil's pond. During the previous three days, we did a little volunteer work -- along with a number of other close friends. The money we raised will help the elderly and less-fortunate.

After vacuum sealing the fish filets for a ommunity fish fry planned for Memorial Day weekend, I heard some heavy equipment working on my property. I ventured down to talk to the crew. They were reworking the right-of-way on my property, and were going to have some excess time before they could move their equipment to the next site. Next thing I knew, I had this big water retention hole in the ground that will far exceed Army Corps requirements.





All I was expecting was the muck to be pulled out of my little triangular shaped 25x25x25 foot, 5-foot deep, settlement/minnow breeding (Mongo)pond. As I was smoking some catfish bellies and venison for a snack for these guys, they were talking to my friend Gary who came to see what these guys were doing on my property.

Photos can't do justice to gauging what they accomplished in about eight hours of running some heavy equipment.

More a little later.

Ken

Pretty Cool Ken!

I wish I had all my Tonka toy's from when I was a kid.

Aw Geeze! You had to give it away. Yes, those are actually Tonka toys from my childhood -- that my grandkids (and I) still play with, nearly 60 years later!

So glad I'm not crazy. Almost had me Ken!

PM sent.

With all kidding aside, this new pond is a lot nicer, and a lot bigger, than I had ever imagined it would be, when I asked for some muck removal from my minnow pond. It cost me some freshly smoked venison, freshly smoked fish, some non-alcoholic drinks, fresh Wisconsin cheese curds, a kettle of chilli, a few pounds of freshly frozen fish filets, some hot coffee, and other items we generally offer to most any friendly-looking individuals who wander back to visit us.

The guys that did this were incredible.

Too cool, Ken! Can't wait to visit and see your progress! Congrats on the fortuitous meeting with these guys!

I was going to ask if you had a close up of the driver waving at you out of the window, but forgetabout it now!

In between important things that need to get done, I've gotten a lot more done on the new pond.

The new pond is coming along well. We got about 2 inches of rain last weekend, and that gave us about 2 feet of water in the pond. It is holding perfectly. I put some markers at the water level four days ago, and it hadn't changed levels at all, during those four days. There is some small amount of runoff still coming in, which is apparently keeping an even water level, even with evaporation -- and, I assume with some seepage/leakage/ground saturation. However, I'm seeing absolutely no evidence whatsoever of leakage at the backside of the dam.

This was the beginning of the new pond. The pond ended up being 75 x 150, which calculates out to 1/4 acre. We'll have an average depth of 4-5 feet.



This was my old brood/settlement pond after it was drained, and before it became part of the new pond. It started out as a "Mongo" pond, based on a talk given by Dave "Mongo" Sefton at one of the early Pond Boss conferences. It served the wildlife well, and it kept a lot of debris from going into the main pond. I think we were all surprised that it was perfectly dry 3-4 inches underneath the clay bottom. This little pond had been dug out with my backhoe, and expanded with friend's excavator. It had been at full pool (about 4-5 foot) since about last September. It had never been tamped, rolled, or compacted.



The old brood pond had been home to many kinds of amphibians, including some big bullfrogs. Here is the foreman, a friend, and his 14 year-old daughter saving a few of the frogs. She took them to the main pond. I had quite a few fathead minnows in this little pond too. I put a pound of them in around the beginning of March, and they were breeding like crazy. We didn't have time to get them out.





When the Dozer Dude got done, the Roller Dude rolled in. He made this thing as smooth as a concrete slab!



While Roller Dude was doing his thing, Trackhoe Dude was pulling topsoil from where Dozer Dude piled many many yards of it. He probably scraped 18-22 inches of rich topsoil into two huge piles, which are now perfect for picnic or camping areas. Trackhoe Dude packed topsoil on the backside of the dam, where I'll plant crown vetch.





A friend brought his excavator over. We cut through the dam to put in an emergency spillway that is getting filled/lined with 16 tons of 6-8 rip-rap.



We also put three 30 foot-parallel pieces of 6-inch corrugated pipe through the dam at the other end. Since we didn't have time to put in a standpipe, this will have to serve as the as the main overflow drain. If you are wondering why three 6-inch pipes, rather than one 18-inch pipe, it was because three 6-inch pipes will provide approximately the same drainage as a single 18 inch pipe. However, I could bury them deeper in the dam to have the same full-pool pond water height. We put rip rap on each side and between each pipe to increase the crush resistance. We then slowly added good clay, and compacted the heck out of it. This gave us an additional 12 inches of clay on top of the pipe, as compared to using a single 18 inch culvert. Plus, I could only get 18-inch culverts in 20-foot lengths, and I needed 30 feet of pipe to get through the dam. We graded it so that it will dump directly into a ditch I will put at the base of the dam. The ditch will be underlaid with fabric and filled with rip rap.

My friend with the excavator, and another friend, cleaned up the stumps and bucked/piled the logs. It should keep them in firewood this coming winter.



They've got several piles like this:



We put in a settlement pond and culvert where most of the water enters the pond. Plus, I've now got another brood pond below the new pond, that will hold about four feet of water. It is nearly full of water now, just from ground runoff. It is located below this pond, but above my main pond.

It is raining again, and we've gotten close to about 1/2 inch of rain since this morning. If it will let up for a while, I plan to go spread grass seed on the flat areas, crown vetch on the dam, and put down some straw on top of all that.

I started putting seed down a day after the pond was finished, and just as rain was starting. I didn't get to finish, or to put down any straw. Some friends drove up to see the new pond as I was putting down the seed. My silly 35 y-o son was also visiting, and started singing:

Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Friends drove down to the levee but the levee was dry
Good ole dad was putting down fescue and rye

I plan to use this pond almost exclusively for "put-and-take." Right now, my thoughts are to put in hybrid bluegill (HBG) and hybrid striped bass (HSB). Over the cold months, I'll stock rainbow and golden trout. I'm hoping the HSB and trout will eliminate any HBG recruitment. I intentionally did not put in any decent spawning areas or cover. The sides are fairly steep for any spawning areas. I plan to feed like crazy.

Ken

And Tilapia during the summer for FA control. Looks great!