The nieces and nephews were having fun running around and helping some. Stacked some structure in the depths of the pond and they're convinced they're going to hammer some giant bass off of the rocks and pile of cinder blocks.
Then they decided to start wading into the mudhole started at the bottom of the pond. The moms loved this as no swimming trunks or gear were brought because this was unplanned. Plus, the water was not exactly the clarity of something out of the Carribean
Then grandpa and some of the older grandsons rolled out chain link on the water line to keep the muskrats out
We like to think we're decent carpenters, but the dock wasn't exactly squared, and you're not able to rip down the tiles like you would a deck board.
So a little manual encouragement from the skid loader on a piling, a couple cross braces, and we're back in business.
Final product looks like this. We ran short 2 tiles, so those will be installed at a later date.
All in all, it was a long weekend of work in the hot sun, but we went home sunburnt, happy, and with a sense of accomplishment.
In addition to the dock, we also spread some 1s and 2s gravel around rock structure for SMB spawning areas,and we have a specific area with pea gravel in it that I'm hoping the RES will latch onto as a spawning grounds.
Let the run off commence, need to get this thing full.
That is awesome! Especially the large turn out of help. My dock is not as complex, but I had to do it myself and, at times, I felt like I had to do a lot of thinking things into place where a handful of friends would have kept the "thinking" to a minimun...you are blessed and the dock will be a great thing.
Looks amazing. It will look even better with the a full pool. looks like you had some supervisors up there in the chairs lol. Thanks for sharing I love seeing others projects like this.
Don’t drop the minnows on the deck..... lol really nice looking pier.... now just need some rain
That's actually one of the things we were concerned about. How many split shot sinkers and pliers are gonna go thru those slats? lol
Oh well, it'll be a nice pool when it's full.
3+ acres wth about a 1/3 acre spawning area that's between 1.5 and 3' deep. Some giant sandstone that go dug out of the pond bed as we were putting it in for structure. SMB, YP, RES, and hopefully eventually some HSB for fun. But for now, I'd settle for rain.
Shelby Fish Farm had 20 smallies, I won't disclose what I paid for them. Yeesh.
just talked to him the other day and hoping he has some feed trained ones for this spring.
He should have, I brought him some last Fall that he was going to feed train. They could all be sold already though. As for prices, I hear ya, but it can't be helped. They were transported 900 miles one way to him. That's part of it, then there's the price of the fish, food, O2 (he runs O2 into his tanks) heat for the building, electricity, fish food, equipment overhead, etc., etc.