bobby 5,
I was exactly where you were a little over a year ago. I spent weeks, hour after hour pouring over every resource I could find on small ponds. Again and again I found that the real world experience of the folks on this forum were the ones with the answers.
With no past experience I rented the equipment and started in with test holes. A month later we officially broke ground. Two months later the lining was compacted in place and the filling began. Ours is almost exactly 1/10th. acre in surface area.
Now 14 months later we have put our first summer of playing in the water in the reveiw mirror. Once the saturated the pond filled, held and continues to out perform many neighboring ponds that are much older and larger.
Around two months ago we added RBT (no other fish other than FH were ever added). The trout are already growing many times faster than I had expected and to my knowledge only one has gone belly up. Feeding time has become my favorite time of the day. I will post pics later but been up for hours working our smoked bird for the family.
