Pond update

[Buck]

Several months ago I posted a photo of excavators digging a pond for my neighbor. I promised I'd post photos when it was done.

Here is the pond, now filled by rain. It is 20 feet deep at max, 10 feet average.

The amount of dirt moved is stupendous. See next posting.

Buck

 

[Buck]

Here is a shot of some of the dirt moved out of the pond. The mound on the left hand side may be deceiving. That horizontal limb on the mound is a tree. !

This will hopefully settle some of the earlier TBM issues regard pond building with compact tractors.

Buck

 

[Buck]

That should be the /w3tcompact/icons/blush.gif right /w3tcompact/icons/blush.gif hand side.

 

[Thomas]

Nice looking pond!
I bet it will be great for ice skating,also bring in more wildlife.
Do you plan on stocking the pond w/fish.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

Here is a pic of my pond, your post made me think about it. It has been froze over since 12/27. You can almost see the three ducks where the ditch opens to the pond as the ducks like to eat there since the water doesn't freeze there.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

Here is what it looks like with out the snow and ice.

 

[Buck]

Thomas,

My son put some Bass and Bluegill in it in the Fall. My experience with another pond (in my front yard) is that thousands of baby bass and 'gill will hatch this Spring. Given that there aren't many big fish, that they'll grow into big fish without much difficulty.

Buck

Buck

 

[Robert_in_NY]

If there isn't enough food for them they will overpopulate the pond in a hurry and be stunted, then you will have a lot of little fish. When we stocked ours we started a year ahead and added just minnows and chubs, being next to Lake Erie we were able to get hundreds of thousands of shiners along the shore with our net then we dumped them into the pond so they had a year to get acquainted with their surroundings and flourish then we added some Largemouth, walleye, and gar pike. There are still millions of the shiners in there and the rest of the fish are doing quite well. I do not like to add panfish to ponds because the other fish have trouble eating them and they can overrun a pond unless you fish them out. Either way good luck and it is a nice pond.

 

[MossRoad]

Around here the preffered pond stocking is a mix of bass, blugill and channel catfish. You have to maintain the correct ratio of about 5 bluegills to every one bass. Catch and release the bass. Catch and eat the bluegill. You can almost never overfish the bluegill. It is unlikely that the catfish will reproduce, unless you provide them with clay tiles or similar structures to hide in. They don't recommend the open water species such as perch or crappie in ponds under 10 acres.

As far as how many fish will a pond support, they figure it like this... A pond has the ability to support X many pounds of fish. Lets say 100 pounds as an example. It will support 1- 100 pound fish or 10- 10 pound fish, or 100- 1 pound fish, or 1000 1/10 pound fish(they keep getting smaller). That's why its important to maintain the bass to bluegill ratio. The bass keep the bluegill in check. The bass provide good sport fishing and the bluegill provide good eating.

Also highly recommended is a way to drain the pond for maintenance or fish population corrections.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

How big do the bass get before they can eat a grown bluegill? I have seen 12" bass try to eat them and have trouble they usually have to spit them out. That is a good point on the drain, our stand pipe doesn't have one but we have access to a 6" pump that takes care of it if we need to.