Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat My Dug Pond Project

I'm sitting on 7 points for mulies now. I saw a couple that I should've chased since I had a leftover tag while I was out there, but I was to focused on elk to chase the deer.

I would love to draw a moose tag someday, a guy shot one right next to our camp on opening morning and I saw a couple other bulls within bow range while I was there as well.

Beautiful Country. I love hunting the mountains, it's so much more fun than chasing whitetails around here. And that's coming from a total whitetail nut!

Since getting back from my hunting trip, I was able to take a couple more pics of the project.

Here's one from the top of my barn looking down on the pond. It's a little disoriented, but gives you a good idea of everything now that the pond is full.



Here's some showing the berms and how the grass has filled in nicely in the last month or so.

Well I have now stocked my crayfish and my shiners. Done stocking until spring when I'm on the lookout for YP.

If you don't mind telling, how much do crawdads cost.

Last week I drained a little pond that will actually be under water when my lake is full. I saw 50-75 crawdads in the bottom of it. There is also evidence of c-dads along a 1/4 mile of ditch that will be under water when the lake is full.

Is that enough c-dads to get things started?

While we were digging the pond this summer, I put two covert game cameras out to overlook the project. I ran them on a 5 minute interval. I wish they were a little bit more wide angle, but they caught most everything.

Here are both videos that I put together.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK3uVe7PjHY


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8fUjo25NLk

I finally made it around to getting my perch in the pond.

150 4-6" perch were planted last week. Kids were excited to help put the new fish in the pond.



The older two wanted to put some in and show them off.



And away they go...



One that the kids squeezed a little to much while putting it in the pond.

The Kids are what it's all about.

This was worth bringing back to the top, nice build!

Thanks Todd! I just reread most of it myself!

I still have to put the dock in, but the grass is doing well.

I do have a lot of suspended clay in the pond right now, so hopefully once the vegetation gets a little more established in the water part it will settle down some and I'll get some visibility in the pond.

Still haven't caught a fish out of it yet. The FHM have spawned, but not sure about my perch because the water is so cloudy, it's hard to see. Same goes for my SMB. Something of decent size is hitting my feeder, but I can't quite tell what they are.

As my kids have grown some since building this pond, we have fished another LMB/BG pond that we have and they are totally hooked on fishing. I can't wait until they can walk out the back door and catch fish!

The motto is;

YOU NEVER SEE KIDS GETTING IN THE BACK OF A POLICE CAR WITH A FISHING POLE OVER THEIR SCHOLDER!!!

Since Google Earth updated the aerials in my area, I was lucky enough to get a new pic of the pond completed. This pic was taken April 11th of 2015.

Figured I'd post it here for those that followed along during the build.

Good picture, it appears to be full am I seeing that right?

Yeah, it filled up right away and has only fluctuated a foot or so during the dry summer last year. After the heavy rains this past weekend, it was probably 6" over full, but my drain tile is moving that water away.

After getting more rain than the over flow could handle (6" in 48 hours on top of 4-5 inches the week before), the pond is probably 1.5-2' above its normal level. It is dropping pretty well now that we have had a day without rain, but it got pretty high as you can see. If you look close, you will see our entire beach area is under water.

Now that I know the worse case water levels of the pond and a newly installed wetland behind the pond. I am going to install another overflow so this type of event doesn't happen again.

Any updates on the overflow? I'd love to see what it looks like, Great job on this write up with pics. Very inspiring.

Well my secondary overflow now consists of a hand dug trench...lol

Nice work!! A well done project!!!

Wanted to add a recent drone pic of the pond. It has cleared up nicely and matured well. You can see some of the structure that I placed. Have some scrap 1" air line left over from my aeration install, so I'm going to make some porcupine trees out of it and some 5 gallon buckets to add to the under water sloe on the back side. Beed catching some real nice perch and bass last couple years.

Here's the picture:

Thanks for stopping back Huntmaster!!

How are the fish populations? Bait fish present? Self sustaining or are you feeding pellets? I'm very curious if you know how your YP are doing? They seem to be the strongest and most adaptable species in my pond. Kids catch them and are not alway so gentle with them and never had one die from handling. I'd love to know if yours are reproducing and if the kids are still catching them!

This post is about 9 years old now? I'm sure we wouldn't even recognize your kids in the pictures anymore!

In your signature line you reference SMB and you made nice spawning structure for them, did they reproduce?

finally, you listed you have pike in your pond? Did you source and stock yourself or they found their way in? Are they still there?

So much to learn from your experiences with this mix of fish in SE Michigan.

I've posted some of this along the way in other threads, just figured I'd put a pic with the original build thread even if some pics have disappeared thru the years.


How are the fish populations? No formal survey, but seem to have strong healthy populations of LMB, YP and a growing population of BG.

Bait fish present? Most of the original shiners are gone now, but that gap was filled with GSF and the LMB seem to be fat and happy at the moment.

Self sustaining or are you feeding pellets? I have been feeding a couple hundred pounds of pellets a year from the beginning.

I'm very curious if you know how your YP are doing? They seem to still be doing well. We catch 12-14" perch on a regular basis with out giving it much effort.

This post is about 9 years old now? I'm sure we wouldn't even recognize your kids in the pictures anymore! That is a fact!!

In your signature line you reference SMB and you made nice spawning structure for them, did they reproduce? They did not, but I also had LMB contaminate my pond right from the out set, so they likely outcompeted the SMB. I haven't caught a SMB in a hot minute, so not sure if they are completely gone at this point of not.

finally, you listed you have pike in your pond? Did you source and stock yourself or they found their way in? Are they still there? They likely hitched a ride in when I used the ditch water to expedite filling the pond. Had one make it to a healthy 36", but it ended belly up last summer. Think it might've died from a swallowed hook that the boy hooked it with. He has caught another 25" pike a couple of times. Caught it last night actually.

Some pics from 2021 season.

A nice fish fry!






36" pike that is now dead














Couple well fed LMB

Pics from this spring 2022

Couple average perch













Caught this guy again last night actually

Awesome pics, Huntmaster.

It looks like they document some awesome fun!

Thank you Thank you for taking the time to document all that and share the pictures. So awesome to see kids smiling with the excitement of catching fish!!

YP look so healthy. Hoping more people will put them in their ponds all across the fruited plain. Sounds like your YP self-sustain despite the predator fish around? Do you see lots of ribbons and successful spawns judged by tiny YP in the shallows each spring?

Keep trying for SMB, maybe some survived.

Pike can be a great stock a few and later catch species. You could also try Walleye as a bonus species and see how they do. Sounds like plenty of forage for a few stocker walleye as well.

keep up the good work!