Creating a Lake

[EddieWalker]

Thank you everyone for your thoughts.

Every time it rains, our first thoughts are towards Lake Marabou and how much water we'll get. hahahaha

The bulk of last nights storm was about ten miles to the West of me. Lindale had 4 inches of rain, but we got 1 1/2 in my guage. There was four possible tornado touchdown sites, but none confirmed as of yet. There are quite a few destroyed buildings and trees down, so we were pretty lucky.

My little 3/4 acre pond is overflowing for the first time in two years!!!

Just guessing, I'd say the lake is up from 4 to 6 inches. It's tough to be accurate because I'm basing my estimates on dirt piles along the shoreline and how much disapears after a rain.

I do need to dig out my silt pits again, as the are all filled up. There is some good evidence that allot of water came through my culverts and runoff ditches!!!

The pictures are dated to show the progress. Steph is standing in the Spillway picture that I took today to give you some idea of how much more water I need to be full.

I mentioned the hay ride enough times to feel I should include a picture of the kids enjoying it. This is on one of my trails.

Eddie

 

[California]

You can ID a diaphram pump vs a centrifigal pump as the centrifugal has a volute (sort of a cornu spiral shape) and the diaphram pump has a smooth regular pump body with no spiral features.

Eddie's pump
http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/rural-living/89439-water-pump-advice-needed-3.html
looks like a centrifugal and the seller, in his later auctions, specifies a cast iron volute. I agree, if this were a diaphragm pump it would work harder when restricted.

Eddie, which type is it?

You may be a redneck if: You come back from the dump with more than you took.

I chuckle every time I see your sig line! Third generation, at least. Latest find: the chain I use to tow a drag behind my disc is salvaged off a rusted-solid chain hoist that was about to go in the dump's scrap iron bin when I grabbed it.

 

[MarkV]

Alright Eddie, it is getting there. Our pond is still low and we are getting your rain this morning. Hope we get as much as you did.

MarkV

 

[jinman]

Eddie, your lake is looking terrific. My pond I dug out this last year is full, but not quite overflowing. It's about 6" from going to the next pond. Our big lake actually cam up around 18" with this last rain (just below 2" in my gage). It would have been less, but the rain fell very quickly and produced a lot of runoff. I'm sure the next rain will put my pond over the spillway. The little "new" pond jumped up over 3' from this latest shower.

Next year at Christmas, you'll have to build a canopy for your trailer. Then you can have an AHV (all-weather hayride vehicle).

 

[patrick_g]

I chuckle every time I see your sig line! Third generation, at least.

Third generation or maybe more like 5th or 7th. Pages of these one liners circulate on the web.

When I was in San Diego they were super **** about dumps (no I wasn't trying for subliminal potty humor.) The San Diego PD used to frequent the scales at the entrance/exit of the Mirromar sanitaarly land fill (in full view of air station, where "Top Gun" was filmed, in order to make $ off overloaded pickups. Luckily they were not there the day I drove my 3/4 ton Ford in weighing over 10,000 lbs or the next day (now that I had a guestimate about how much demoed concrete would weigh) at over 12,000 lbs. I did score a couple full sheets of 3/8-7/16 CDX.

Yeah, the diaphram pump, like the gear pump, tries to be a positive displacement pump and hates to have its ports restricted too much. The centrifugal pump is way more forgiving.

Whoopee, the one inch we got a couple days ago still had water running off the watershed yesterday into one of my ponds that was overflowing into another pond which had all but gone dry a while back.

Pat

 

[tommu56]

Eddie
To measure change in lake
What about a wooden sled with a cinderblock on it to keep it on bottom
a rope to shore to pull back to edge of water and a foot rule hooked to block to measure change with ?
tommu56

 

[rox]

Eddie,

your lake sure looks great! l enjoyed the pics of the kids, i bet they had fun on the hayride even if it wasn't the time you had planned. I am being patiently curious like veryone else here to find out if it clears up or if it will stay brown. We'll all jsut have to wait to find out.

 

[BTDT]

Sorry I didn't go back and read through 70 pages to get this answer, but what are your fish stocking plans? Are there any carp in there. I have always heard that you could put in carp and they would seal up any leaking area's, and they would help with the cleaning up of the cloudiness. Catfish may serve the same purpose. Hopefully you won't have any areas that won't seal off on their own.

 

[EddieWalker]

Thanks everyone for all your generous and kind words.

As for my stocking plans, they are still evlolving. As of right now, I'm planning on putting Fathead Minnows, Redear Sunfish and Coppernose Bluegill in the lake at the end of February or early March. It depends on when winter ends and the water starts to warm up.

A month of so later, I'll put in Channel Catfish. Then I'll wait until I've had a few spawns with the minnows to stock large mouth bass. My guess is that will happen sometime in June or July.

To get big bass and good fighters that will be fishable, I'm thinking of putting in the cross of Florida and Northern Bass. I believe they are called F1's. Not positive on the name. hahaha

I've read a few reports on the grass carp and they seem like a good idea. They eat algea and help clear up the water. I need a permit to put them in and I can only buy females, but from what I understand, it's a pretty easy process.

I'm also thinking about putting in Mozambique Talapia. The die off when the water temps has me a litte concerned, but from what I've read over at Pondboss.com, it's not something that's very evident. Apperantly, when they die from the water getting cold, Mother Natured cleans them up real quickly.

I've also just started thinking about trout. They need the cold water, but from what Meadowlark has said, they are great winter fish to catch and eat. Of course, when warm weather comes back in the spring, they will all die off just like the Talipia do in the fall.

Any thoughts?

Eddie

 

[RobJ]

Eddie,

I'm surprised yall didn't get more rain. We are about 60 miles to the south and got plenty. Some tornados came through, took out power for about 5 hours. Blake and I had the boat in the river and almost lost it!! Attached are a few pics. This is in the Trinity river. I personally have never seen it come up this fast (we've built the weekend place in 2001). I wanted to go down and night and check it but my wife would have none of that. We left the boat, bait and some fish Friday morning at about 10:00am. Then the storms. I didn't think we got that much rain at the house, a neighbor recorded 2.5 inches...I think the boat got more. Saturday morning this is what we found. If you look at the line on the front, it's attached to a 3/8" piece of rebar in the shape of a J...stuck in the mud about 16". I don't know how it held. Also when we left the boat was half in the river and the J hook was about 12' in front of the boat. We were able to use a tie town with the hook end to hook the bait bucket, then pull it over. I held it up while blake got in (a little lighter than i ) bailed it out. It didn't take much to get the hook out of the mud below. We are lucky to still have this boat. But after bailing, the engine never knew what happened...we fired it up and when fishing. We did lose 4 lines because we could not fing them... Somebody upstream got some rain!! It usually takes 3 days for the water from Dallas to reach this part of the river...