Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations If You Could Start All Over...

My pond is about a week away from being complete (I hope), and I thought it might be interesting to hear what current pond owners might do differently, if they could start all over with the knowledge they have now. It might be a good resource for those of us just starting out, or even still in the planning process.

I have compiled all of the responses so far to give a running total. I'll try to monitor this thread and update it when I can:

Better and/or more habitat and structure: 8
Different stocking rates/species: 8
Bigger or deeper pond: 5
Built own pond vs buying one: 2
Planned for erosion control: 2
Planned for a boat ramp: 2
Planned for a dock: 2
Hired a more experienced pond builder: 2
Planned for a forage pond: 1
Better vegetation plan: 1

Can we use your pond as the template?

What's the size of your new pond?

Over-all I like my pond. The pond was built 2-4 years before we purchased the property. In several areas the incline from the shore is not steep enough...it should drop off sooner. These shallow shoreline "shelf areas" go out several feet into the pond and they tend to get the most algae every year. A few "shallow shelfs" would be ok for spawns and fry...but I have too many of these. Also the guy that owned the property did not place hardly any structure in the pond as it was being built. I'd probably add some kind of "boulder walkway" out into the water if I was having a pond built....to me it looks neat, you can cast from it, and it's kind of unique structure...sort of like images below. Much easier to get big boulders placed before a pond fills.

Absolutely. I told the contractor I wanted a minimum of 0.5 acres, but here's the example I gave him, which is 0.6 acres. The wooded area is almost completely cleared as I write this post. It's also in a natural valley. The letter "c" in "acres" is roughly in the middle of the valley, and the sides go up from that point, to the left and right. My total property size is 3.3 acres, which is outlined in white.

Things I would have done:

Add tons of varied habitat as well as dense cover before it fills. Rock piles, boulders, brush piles, plastic fish attractors, pallet stacks, and plenty of them.

Add pilings for a dock.

Divert the run-off from neighbor's pond upstream to keep the LMB out.

I went with 4 tons of ag lime per acre, should have been twice as much in acid east Texas soil. Also, the lime should have been disked into the bottom.

More humps and other structure placed in pond.

Build spawning homes for fathead minnows. Also, don't stock adult tilapia in pond until there was algae for them to eat - they ended up eating my fathead minnows, which meant my original stocked Fla bass went hungry & stunted.

If I was starting over, I would have built ponds 10-15 years sooner.

And stocked no Golden Shiners and fewer Channel Cats in the first pond.

I would have selected a builder that had a lot more experience building ponds

I would have renovated the pond and tripled the size of it before beginning construction on the house.

I would have done what you did - buy a place without a pond and build my own. When we bought this place we were in the "oh cool, and it has a pond" stage of knowledge. If I had known how cool it really is to have a pond I would have bought a place where I could build my own. There is a crap load of work, assumptions and compromising trying to make an old neglected pond what you want.

A lot more cedars in the bottom for sure. I have built some cover but no where near enuff. Most certainly would put in some kind of post for a dock. More rock beds on bottom and more skids for spawning. Also would have made it bigger. I have redug mine 3 times now. Twice before I found this forum. Go as big as you can = less mowing. I made one side alil to steep to mow safety so I would have fixed that. I hope some of these will help ya.

Given the budget I was on and the amount of physical work that was was doing...I couldn't of changed much.

Although, I should have added a finer grate over the outflow pipe. My pond gets allot of water throughput and I'm 94.7% sure that most of the 600 panfish (HBG & RES) that I stocked washed out and left my pond with very few forage producers. It has taken most of 3 seasons for the panfish population to start to show some enthusiasm at feeding time. I remember standing on the overflow pipe and thinking about it and decided that the hassle of keeping a 1/2" wire mesh clean was not worth the risk of most of the panfish moving to the creek...I was wrong. Most of the HSB stayed in the pond (I think...they were 10 larger in size), but my goal of growing larger HBG and making easy and abundant catching washed to the creek too.

Come to think of it, I should add the mesh now before wet weather comes again and try to keep the recruitment that I am currently witnessing at feeding time. They are about as big as the original stockers.

Thanks for asking the question and making me think of this!

Take the budget constraints away, then the physical work problem goes away too, and I would have had someone else build a FHM forage/sediment pond followed by a HBG/RES pond followed by a HSB pond...1/8 acre, 1/2 acre, 1 acre respectively. The upper two would have valved drain systems that would allow the FHM and HBG ponds to be mostly or partially drained to the next as a feeding operation....but now I'm dreaming!

Hindsight is 20/20.

I wish I would have found a "now" friend earlier. We were both digging ponds at the same time. He has pure clay, I have almost pure sand. He needed sand, I needed clay.... The dump trucks could have gone both directions loaded. We ran into each other a year later.

Build cover BEFORE the pond started filling.

I would also have taken out the island - would have gotten more water volume and could have gone deeper.

I wish we would have finished a day or two earlier and that would have given myself time to put erosion mats all around the pond. I left for a 10 day hunt in Wyoming and the day that I left Hurricane Ike rolled through the area, dropping 12" rain in 24 hours and washing 3' of sand back into the pond.

Great replies. 5 people have already mentioned structure/habitat so that seems to be the common denominator so far.

I think we can dredge up some stocking woes too.....

I would have tried to establish erosion control on the shores-better- before filling. Definitely more diverse habitat. I wish I would have better thought out spawning areas, had a better plan for desired aquatic vegetation and most of all I wish I would have waited a full year for the forage base to max out. I would also have waited until year 2 to stock crayfish.

Sunil always has to put more drama in the plot. I would have skipped the catfish. About got all of mine out now. They help create a murky pond. I like feeding them but like seeing what's in there also.

a Couple of yall have mentioned building your own is better than buying one....

Damnit now Im back into wanting to build one vs buy one

CityDad, it's just two sides of a coin. There's tremendous joy in both sides.

My main 4.5 acre pond was existing for some 30-40+ years when we acquired it, so no do-overs there.

Now, my 1/4 acre neighborhood retention pond is one that I started from scratch. In this case, there was no option to make it any larger or smaller, or put in dirt humps/islands.

For the 1/4 acre pond, I could only have stocked it differently. The original stocking was bucket stocking from my 4.5 acre pond with LMB, Bluegill, and Yellow Perch, after having put in golden shiners and fatheads. Then I added some , SMB, HSB and CC.

In hindsight, I would have gone straight SMB, with Yellow Perch and Redear Sunfish. And a few CC.

My thoughts for whatever value they have - if your primary purpose for owning land is to have a pond then I would recommend build. I am sure there are downsides to building but my pond was here so I can only speak to buying an existing pond. If you are going to buy a place with a pond determine what was the primary purpose of the pond for the prior owner. Maybe it was a fishery and has been managed well but maybe, and probably, not.

The upside for me in buying a place with a pond is that I know it is tight as a drum and holds water, it never went dry during the drought of 2011, and it has a great watershed. The downsides are it was a 1-1/4 acre stock tank that also provided a place for the owner to also occasionally wet a hook but its purpose was not a fishery. That great watershed coming from north, south, and east.....well, it literally brought pasture loads of manure with it for a long time (at least 20 years probably more like 30). I wish it was bigger and the land and watershed can support it but given the cost, complexities and patience required, as long as I own this place I am going to have a 1-1/4 acre pond. It took a couple of years of fishing and keeping records to work out a stocking plan that hopefully will work with what was already living in the pond. I can't just say I want this fish and that fish and go to it. I have to be mindful of what the pond already is. Don't get me wrong, I love my pond and am getting a lot of satisfaction in turning it around and seeing it improve both aesthetically and as a fishery. But, the bottom line is, this pond was not built to be a fishery and so I have had to adjust my goals and be flexible.

So to me, if your primary purpose of having land is to have a pond - build the pond. If you get a place with a pond then understand the history of the pond and be ready to compromise.

Mister A - that's a whole lot of sense and wisdom.

Makes a lot of sense

If I had it to do over, knowing what I now know, I would not have renovated the old pond in 2015. I would have had it filled in, and not built the other two ponds in 2016. They have been money pits. The first one leaks, and I spent a lot of time and effort pumping into it. Finally got a good catfish population, then the otters and herons devastated everything in both the 1/4 acre ponds. All the wasted food...I could have bought all the ready to cook american catfish I could eat for the rest of my life. Herons ate 80% of the small CC that I was raising in the forage pond this summer.

Sorry for the negativity, but as the cliche says: It is what it is.

Owning a pond isn't all sunshine and rainbows, so your "negative" stories are appreciated. We learn more from our mistakes than our triumphs it seems. I hope I don't get Herons at my new pond, but I got a special surprise for them if they do And I don't think we have otters where I'm at, at least I've never seen any or heard about them.

I would have gone from 12 acres to 6, and made it deeper. I would have also added a drought capable boat ramp.

yes i really wish I had a small concrete boat ramp
Overtons got stuck several years ago launching the electro boat
had to borrow a neighbor's tractor to get 'em out.

The only thing I would change is what I put in it fish wise. There ain’t no such thang as a perfect pond cause hindsight always jumps in.... purty much Like life itself

I would have stocked larger lmb instead of 2" fingerlings for my first lmb stocking. I had low survival of the lmb fry. I think the CNBG and or RES along with the Tp ate the lmb fry. Would have been better off i think if my lmb fry would have been 3" instead of 2" fry. And i should have added the grass carp the first year of the pond.

Read the article about your situation in the latest PB magazine, Tracy. You made logical decisions and they worked out well for years, but sometimes nature throws us a curve ball. Mild winters really seem to favor brushy pondweed. I'll add some grass carp this winter, hopefully they can keep things under control after knocking the weed back with herbicide a couple months ago.

Frank, the pond was a great place to fish and then the Bushy pondweed took off like crazy. Bob L. said to me "I bet it only took a few short weeks for it to take over the pond" He was so right. So at the time it seemed like just days. Today, I am just now starting to survey by fishing to see what gamefish fish I have left in the pond. I do have good numbers of bg up to 9" or better. I do have some lmb up to 3lbs but I think my lmb numbers are down. I have seen one hsb so far and it has a jig head in the corner of it's mouth from a breakoff from some kid back last spring. Not sure if it is the only one that survived. Now with all that i have learned I see where i can start back with a better plan because of what all i learned over the past 6 yrs.

My pond was dug in 2016, I had been preparing for that for several years leading up to that time. Things I did right: 1. Read Pond Boss...I learned A LOT from here and applied many of those lessons to the buildout process. As a consequence, I am 97% happy with everything about that pond. It is a high quality resource that I greatly look forward to taking my grandson there on his first fishing trip, and many others. (He is 5 months old now...so soon. :))

2. I put in more structure in it than Carter has pills, much of it plastic/PVC, rock/concrete and timbers/root balls that will last for a LONG time. I think I have more structure in that thing than 99% of the ponds I know about. If anything, I would put more rock humps in, but $$'s limited me there some. Oh well, it's pretty good as is.

3. At the suggestion of the pond builder, I built it bigger and deeper than originally planned. I am very happy with that decision, although it did cost me more at the time, I have about 3/4 acre more surface water and A LOT more depth overall.

4. I put in the pilings for the three docks ahead of time, prior to filling. The main dock is an "L", about 8' wide, 20' long, with a 12' "spur". So plenty of dock and the pilings are old telephone poles, so very sturdy too.

5.

Things I would have done differently: 1. More rock...rock piles, humps with big rocks on top of them, more rock on the shoreline. That's about it...I am very happy with it and with you the best as you prepare to build yours.

I've updated my original post to show a running tally of all of the responses so far. I hope people find it as useful as I have.

I would have drained my entire pond dug out all the muck that I could and made the shore line a bit steeper, but that in a perfect world. LOL

For me, these things:
0. Found Pond Boss first.
1. Went with the more expensive reputable pond builder, not cheaper hole digger. This would have meant a larger pond, less likely to leak, and would have been downhill a little more which may have had better water input.
2. Built a pivoting floating dock capable of 3' of water depth changes rather than a wishful thinking fixed dock.
3. Ladder stocked my fish, most notable the walleye should have been stocked maybe 5 at a time.
4. Skipped the black-crappie. They simply don't thrive in our waters.
5. Structure, though perch and BC don't seem to care about it as much as perhaps bass and BG.

If I had money to burn, I would drain the current pond, and enlarge it downhill like the original quote. I would guide the construction carefully, and make sure compaction was performed correctly. I would then build structure and re-stock all over again.

My 0.15 acre pond was dug out of good clay in a flat spot, with the water level sitting about 2.5 feet below the existing grade.

My freeboard is just bare clay at a 2:1 slope, with nothing growing on it. I would have made the sides a bit less steep, and I would have immediately put down erosion mats to get grass growing before there was wave action to wash the topsoil away. I might have also put a bit of a shelf just above the water line, so that I can have topsoil right down to the water line, and then just straight clay below the waterline.

I also built a beach. It has been great, but is a little squishy underfoot in the water. I would have put down a layer of gravel first , almost like a shallow gravel parking lot, and then put the sand on top of this. I think this would make the beach feel more appealing to the average person.

Finally I wish I had some sort of “skimmer” to pull leaves and algae into one corner of the pond where I could easily remove it. Right now I wait for some wind and go around and manually remove floating organics with a rake. I wish I had a pump or something to pull all this organic material into a corner, where it could be easily removed. Almost like a pool skimmer.

Ted wouldnt a fountain do that?

Yeah I think any aerator (fountain or diffused) creates a natural "up and away" motion that pushes floaty stuff to the shore. I'm sure you could position it so that it pushes everything to one corner, even though there's not that much shoreline in a 0.15 acre pond.

If I could do one thing different, it would be to find Pond Boss magazine and this forum eight years ago! We dug our pond seven years ago, the the help from the magazine and all the great voices in this forum would have made our pond building life much easier and more fun. We enjoy our pond, but had to make mistakes to learn on our own. Great to be in this group! Thanks to all!

Good question Steve_ and CityDad. I do have bottom aeration, right in the center. It does a decent job of pushing organics to the shore but not great - some inevitably stays floating outside my reach. The stuff that does make it to shore gets caught up in the rushes, which makes it harder to remove.