Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Selecting a site Pond Shape

Hi everyone, I've been lurking around this site for the past couple of years as we tried to figure out what to do with our land, however we finally decided to move forward with building a pond. The site that I'm building on is unfortunately extremely flat. Only 3' of elevation change over 30 acres which means we're essentially just going to be digging a big hole in the ground and hauling dirt. The only good thing about the site is that its solid clay, and we can pretty much build this pond in any shape we want. We're hoping to build a 2 acre tank but that may be scaled back all the way to an acre due to budget. The main goal of the tank is to be used for bass fishing. Right now I'm telling potential contractors that I'm looking to build an oval that's 150ft wide and 580 ft long with a 4:1 slope down to 12' on one half and 10' on the other half. This is just making the bidding process a little easier as I narrow the field of potential contractors. My question is, if you could have a 2 acre tank in any shape, what shape would you make it in? Secondary question is, with this only being a 2 acre tank or potentially smaller, is the oval good enough? Regardless of what I do, I will be adding all the necessary fish structure and gravel to optimize the pond.

Thanks for your input,
David

I would build it with an irregular shoreline with several short indents and a few peninsulas along with underwater shelves and maybe an island.

Welcome to the forum!!

I would change the slope to 3:1 to get deeper water sooner, but leave some areas 4:1 down to about 5' depth then go to 3:1. That will allow some spawning areas but get more water down below the sunlight faster to limit underwater weed growth.

Bass, like deer are edge dwellers. The more edges they have to relate to, the more area in the pond is habitat for the bass. Put fingers and peninsulas out into the pond. That will do two things. 1) Create more edge cover and 2) When it comes time to electroshock the pond, that will allow more areas that can "trap" the fish and allow the pond to be electroshocked easier.

I would go down to 12' or even 15' in as many areas as possible. Even if it means having to reduce the surface area a bit. More depth means more water volume in the pond, more water depth means that it will be less susceptible to evaporation and more water depth means that it could stay cooler during the dog days of summer.

I would make it more than 5 ft deep. You, in Austin, need to impound as much water as you can. That means a deeper hole. Mine is about 10 ft deep and is now down about 5 ton6 ft.

David,

Welcome to Pond Boss!

Is the pond going to be viewed from a house? Is the primary purpose fishing, family recreation, or other? Those will be big factors on picking your optimal shape.

Even though the ground is flat, how much of the watershed above your pond site is still on your property? THAT is the key dimension that you cannot (usually) alter.

IMO, you need to determine the maximum water elevation of your pond - that will still impound all of the water upslope in your watershed AND still stay within your project boundaries. That elevation will set your shoreline. For example, imagine a dam at your lowest point within the pond project area. You may only be able to impound 2.5' of water at the dam, but now you can then project the "natural" outline of your pond. Anything different than that will have to be excavated below the existing grade.

MOVING dirt is expensive. Depending on your ideal "view" of the pond, can you build a berm with your dirt spoils at some near distance back from your projected shoreline. That will be much cheaper, but may be too ugly. Another option would be to actually design some hills and terraces on your flat property. Perhaps you and your wife could come up with a creative and attractive design? (You need to scrape and save the good topsoil, build your hills with the clay, and then grade the good topsoil back over your clay to re-establish your ground cover.)

Is there another location on your property that collects water better than your pond site? If so, another option would be to use that area as your water "source" for the main pond. If you had a sufficient water source, then you could build a berm with your clay spoils all around the shoreline of your main pond. Basically, excavate down 5' and build a berm 5' tall to get a pond that is 10' deep. That is much cheaper for your dirt work. However, surface water run off will NOT flow into that type of pond! You need a water source to fill (and keep full) that type of pond. Fortunately, pumping water over minimal elevation changes is not very expensive.

Just throwing out ideas while you are still in the planning stages. Good luck on your future pond!

Sounds like you have a clean slate, drawing board to create any shape that you like, and the shape will probably not add any cost to the actual build, might even reduce it,
Like others have said, for LMB, the biggest thing to keep in mind is that shorelines are your best places for fish and fishing, for bait to big ones, the more ft of shoreline you can create the better, some points and coves add a tremendous amount of shoreline. personally I love the looks of them but some people may like a perfectly round or oval shape for aesthetics.
Also, like FishinRod said, some of your spoils can be be utilized to build slight terraces to intercept other drainage points on your 30 acres and guide the water into the pond, mention this option to the builder. as flat as your property is it wouldnt be hard and will actually give you a place to go with some of your spoils, the dam itself wont eat up much of it at all.
Good Luck! let us know how it goes.

Guys, thanks for the responses. Just so you know, I have around 100 different questions that I want to ask but I'm trying to break stuff down to keep things simplified. I'm bringing this up because some of you have pointed stuff out that I have slated as "future questions to post".

Overall I think what I am hearing is that I definitely need to add some peninsulas to the project. My thought is potentially 2 on each side which will give the lake a bit of "zippered look". From lurking and reading as much as I can my intentions were always to make my straight sections of the shoreline a bit irregular but only having them vary maybe 3-5'. I didn't think of electroshocking and the other benefits of a peninsula.

Also it sounds like the general consensus is to go deeper even if it means reducing the surface area of the lake. My only follow up to that is we have had an engineer to study our waterflow out at the property and he told us that we could create a lake that would hold 55 acre ft of water fairly safely. So in theory we should have plenty of run off. However, I understand that having a lot of run off doesn't do much good when it physically doesn't rain for 4 months. Would you all still go down to 12-15'?

Esshup, you hit on one of my "questions for later" with controlling weeds. If going down at a 3:1 slope will benefit that then I will definitely adjust my plans. Last lake we built it became impossible to fish around the bank because the weeds went out 30' from the shoreline.

Fishinrod, so unfortunately the land isn't lending any natural shape to this pond (there is a natural draw, but I can't build a dam higher than 1.5' with out flooding the bulk of the property and my neighbors) so as a result, it will be extremely expensive to build because we will be moving lots of dirt. We have sat on the property for several years deciding whether to sell it or keep it. I eventually decided to keep it because it's very close to my house, and provides an area to store equipment for my business. It's also not bad for pig and deer hunting. We are moving forward with the pond because I'm actually a huge duck hunter and the location of this property is in a very heavy duck traffic area. I left this part out initially because the lake is going to be built purely with bass fishing in mind and I didn't want to add too much complexity to the original question. I'm going to add a shallow section for the ducks where the water comes into the lake, in theory that will hopefully help reduce sediment entering the tank too. The shallow section may or may not hold water during duck season but if the tank is holding water it should be good for a few hunts a year. To address your other questions, this land also is full of other easements which makes it not very appealing to build a house on. We are going to put a trailer or tiny home on the property so my wife has a place to get out of the heat if I'm out there fishing with the kids. Overall we are trying to get this done with out spending too much money so that we can go off and buy another property that we can really enjoy in the future.

An acre is about the playing surface of a football field. It takes a fair amount of rain to keep these things full. That means a good size area to get the water from.

If the lay of the land is not going to control your pond shape, then you literally are starting with a blank canvas.

I just wanted to throw out one other possible consideration. On flat ground, wind-driven waves will constantly be trying to erode you shorelines.

I think the "visual" appeal and fish structure should be your primary design considerations. However, the shape of the pond and the location of the peninsulas can significantly affect the fetch of your waves which controls their erosive power.

If your primary winds are north-south, then a lake that has the longer axis running east-west will have less chop on the water. Likewise, for a square lake, having the peninsulas built out from the east and west banks will do more to reduce the wave fetch across the pond.

Yes, I'd go down 15'. Take my personal pond. It is a water table pond, dependent on the water level in the ground. It was at full pool May 2019. It hasn't been back to full pool since. It has at it's lowest (before I turned on the well to bring some of the water level back up) been down 9 vertical feet from full pool. I knew it varied about 4', so when I renovated it we went down to 23' deep. (1 1/4 acre pond at full pool).

If I hadn't gone that deep I would have lost the majority of fish in the pond because I would have only had 3-4 feet of water in it if I'd listened to people in the area. Surface area wise it went from 1 1/4 acre to less than 1/2 acre. I pulled out 60-100 pounds of fish per year for the last 4 years so the biomass didn't surpass carrying capacity. I ran the aerator all the time and fed the fish in the pond because any cover that they had to hide in was out of the water with the pond being 9' low.

In regards to fetch and soil erosion, if you were to put 10"-12" limestone rip-rap boulders around the pond in those areas and run them down to about 3'-4' water depth, it will add habitat for the pond, help somewhat with alkalinity and prevent soil erosion due to waves.

So I have increased my depth to 15' and slope to 3:1 pretty much around the entire pond with the exception of a few places where I'm doing 4:1 and will locate my pea gravel beds in those locations. Since my lake level is going to fluctuate, I'm planning on doing long pea gravel beds that will vary in depth, this way if I'm low on water then some of the bed will still be useable. I'm going to tuck these between the peninsulas and the bank to protect them from the wind and waves. I'm going to have a lot of bank to fish which is where I will focus my efforts to install a good amount of cover, however, If I installed a bunch of cedar trees down the center of this lake, would the fish use these? Keep in mind the lake is 15' deep and the cedars I have access too are mostly 8-10', plus I probably still need to sink them a ft down so they stay.

15' may be a little too deep? Are you going to aerate during the summer? That depth would probably be below your thermocline and be in the low oxygen water.

How far can you (or kids) cast from your shore? I think I would prefer clumps of cedars with defined fishing lanes that anglers could cast past, and then retrieve along the edges of the cedar piles. That works for topwater lures, diving lures, bottom-rigged lures, and live bait under bobbers.

Rod, in Texas 15 ft is temporary. Mine is about 13 and is now down about 7 or 8 ft.

DD1,

I hope you can appreciate some "reverse drought" humor. Our drought is slowly receding, and it has been cold and wet ever since that last big cold front came through two weeks ago.

My wife was walking past two teachers on Friday that have playground duty and chuckled when she heard this.

Teacher 1: "Oh no, rainy today - again!"

Teacher 2 (known for her sarcasm): "Good thing. I didn't want all of our mud to get dehydrated!"

Definitely have some curves to the pond, maybe like a big peanut or horseshoe. If you get much wind rip-rap or stone is almost a must around the outside edge. It will help with erosion/water clarity and provide cover for small fish/bugs/crawfish.

The cover down the middle deep is a good idea, will get used hard in winter. Large rocks bunched together are good cover for fish to suspend around.