Show us your ponds !

[milius2]

Having nothing to do really and much to talk about I wanted to talk about ponds. Do you have any and would you like to share your story with us?
I'd show you mine, but it's naked (empty) at the moment Well, I have to get proper photos and then you'll see.

 

[BigX]

I love a pond, but mine had two foxes drown in it within a week of each other - possibly a suicide pact.

The joy of dragging rotting water-logged bodies from it spurred me to put a grille over it. Not the same, really...!

 

[santaman2000]

I have two on my land in Mississippi. The older one was dug at least a half century before I was born. If family history is correct it was dug using a team of mules pulling a blade called a "slip" and is on the east 40. I learned to fish in that pond when I had barely learned to walk.

The newer of the two (now over a half century old itself) was dug by Daddy using a small bulldozer (a Cat D9 if I remember correctly) on the west 40 when I was a still too young too start school. I sat on the ground nearby and watched some of the construction. I had many good fishing days from that pond as well.

Both ponds also served as watering holes for our horses and livestock.

 

[milius2]

I also have two, one is running water pond, stay fresh all the summer, another is a bigger one, about 0.2 ha and we drained it this summer for some maintenance work and get the unwanted pike out. But that did not much good as there is still loads of baby pike in the pond, so problem still exist. Will show when I can

 

[SoldierPalmer]

You will never get rid of the pike but if you leave them alone for a few years the females will grow large enough to eat most of the males in the end you will be left with very few small pike and a few large pike once it balances out you can think of adding other species.

 

[David LaFerney]

We have one - Small enough to have a conversation across, but it still has a few catfish and bluegill in it. Perfect for a kid with a cane pole.

 

[Tony]

You will never get rid of the pike but if you leave them alone for a few years the females will grow large enough to eat most of the males in the end you will be left with very few small pike and a few large pike once it balances out you can think of adding other species.

Eat the large pike when they're done eating the smaller ones.

 

[Adze]

Best to leave the big girls alone Tony, the post above about the big pike keeping the little pike in check is spot on, a quick way to cause a pike explosion in a trout water is to take out the big pike. Once you have a few bigger fish you can take some of the middling ones out for food, they're a bit of a pain to prepare for the table compared with carp or salmonids though.

 

[milius2]

I would totally agree with the suggestions noted! And that is going to be the way we go, I'll advice this to the rest of the family and we'll have to live with few larger pike's "untouchables". Yes, they are a bit of pain to prepare, but taste is great! I will try to bring in some carp in a few years time, but so far it has been only feeding the pike.... There is one species that live well with pike and that is tench (Tinca tinca),debecause they can hide well, but they are terrible in taste because of the same reason. They spend too much time in mud and get the taste of a swamp, though we managed to get rid of the smell by keeping them alive in a fresh water tank for a week, but it's too much work. Any suggestions?

 

[Tony]

Best to leave the big girls alone Tony, the post above about the big pike keeping the little pike in check is spot on, a quick way to cause a pike explosion in a trout water is to take out the big pike. Once you have a few bigger fish you can take some of the middling ones out for food, they're a bit of a pain to prepare for the table compared with carp or salmonids though.

Ha ha, I pictured just a big huge pike left

 

[Tomteifi]

...and your name vill also be on ze list Pike.......

 

[Joonsy]

I love a pond, but mine had two foxes drown in it within a week of each other - possibly a suicide pact.

The joy of dragging rotting water-logged bodies from it spurred me to put a grille over it. Not the same, really...!

does your pond have steep sides, when building ponds it's best to have a gently sloping edge somewhere so anything that falls in can get out (and it looks much better than a grill over the pond), often when walking places like canals I find drowned animals, they can't climb out because of the steep sides so drown.

 

[Badger74]

The newer of the two (now over a half century old itself) was dug by Daddy using a small bulldozer (a Cat D9 if I remember correctly) on the west 40 when I was a still too young too start school. I sat on the ground nearby and watched some of the construction.

You make me laugh; D9 a small dozer CAT D6 and Komatsu D65's are as big as we really go

I'm toying with the idea of a pond in my bit of wood, but what would people consider being a good size to sustain fish without he need to feed them?

 

[milius2]

How much are you looking into spending? I have already spent a 10 year old decent model car on my ponds and no regrets DDD It is one of the best landcape features you can have and in my case I think it is something a lot more attractive that a car. Size don't matter much if you dont over stock the pond, so it's back to the same question $$$$$... Over the years the bit of land that has the big pond has attracted loads of people and has become their and ours vacation destination, so whenever we do big jobs on the pond we have as many people join in with their cash as possible and the last bit was very expensive and there were 6 of us cashing in to pay for it so you might also spread the idea in your family too. We have managed to build sauna there from spare bits over the years and people that play part can come whenever they like and be there as much as they like with all their friends. Saying that it has been around for 15 years now so it is a lot easyer with a set up that is working....

And I just got news from machinery guy saying he might show up this week to finish up the job so fingers crossed and lets hope my wife will fund it for me as I'm broke!

 

[santaman2000]

You make me laugh; D9 a small dozer CAT D6 and Komatsu D65's are as big as we really go ....

We have a few smaller than a D9 over here too but they're rarely used commercially. That said, while the D9 is the smallest normally used, it's also probably the most common dozer used here. The biggest used to be the AC41 but I really haven't kept up with it in decades.

 

[Badger74]

Milius, you will have to post some photos in this thread. I only thought about digging a hole in a boggy part of my garden, your description sounds like too much effort at the moment.

Santaman, its the opposite over here. Not much call for the bigger stuff unless in a quarry. Most site works use D6 sizes. The last time I saw a dozer that big was several years ago and it stayed parked up because it couldn't move on site; ground conditions were poor and it only had normal tracks and not LGP ones.

 

[santaman2000]

Milius, you will have to post some photos in this thread. I only thought about digging a hole in a boggy part of my garden, your description sounds like too much effort at the moment.

Santaman, its the opposite over here. Not much call for the bigger stuff unless in a quarry. Most site works use D6 sizes. The last time I saw a dozer that big was several years ago and it stayed parked up because it couldn't move on site; ground conditions were poor and it only had normal tracks and not LGP ones.

To be honest my ponds are quite small and a smaller dozer would have been fine for digging the newer one (remember I said the older one had been dug with a mule drawn slip!) But the smaller ones are a bit slow clearing the forest away for the pond.

Images of an old mule drawn slip:

 

[milius2]

OK, I was hoping for some good weather to make better photos, but let it be, it has been sorrow winter with too much rain and cloud and not enogh snow and clear weather, but it's life and that's how it goes. I will split this in two stories as I will talk about two ponds.

This is a pond I dug next to my cottage. I was just about to start building something on my property that was supposed to be a garden shed and I though I'd like a water feature where I could get water for my garden. And beaver did a favour. They build a dam over irrigation channel and when I tried to cross it I found about 3 feet of water there. So I thought this was a good place to start a pond, because I'd have a constant water supply and the less you have to dig the more value of water vs money you get. My property is U shaped by irrigation channels and this pond is just a well cleared T joint of these channels. This is hot it sits in location:

And once it settled into place and we managed the dirt and the rest of the jobs the excavator came back and finished the job and build one more feature that was needed. He made a road over the channel and a drive way for me to get into my property from this side of the channel. This channel has separated two pieces of land, one owned by my, which now after investments and management extends 4.5ha ( was originally 1.5ha) and one owned by my dad witch is 7ha plus THE SWAMP (we will talk about it later).

On the other side of the road I planted quite a few of guelder-rose that I grasped (green protection). They are my favourite shrubs because they attract numerous birds in the winter and are still very much absent in the landscape after mistreatment by forest managers.

For crossing the channel I used this foot bridge for a few years and it is on the shortest way to THE SWAMP. Surely it was us that built it

Right next to the pond we built a round "Nursery" pen, where we used willow and the traditional way of building natural fences. And that is a place where we grow our tree and shrub stock witch will be planted all over the homestead. You cannot have too many trees here the landscape is very monocultural when you get off my property so I'd like to have as much variety as I can on my piece of land.

I cannot tell if I really anticipate the moment when the frost is over and I have to manage all these plants I better be nice person and hopefully some friends will come along Anyway that's how it always has been, because for one man it is waaaaay too much work. Hundreds of plants, but we've done over 1000 wild ones by now

The nursery has been chosen and done in a manner that it would be moist during hot summers and shaded in the hottest part of the day. Plants love it and once we plant these out we will grow some veggies for an experiment and once that is done this will become a Nursery for our growing kids in the family.



And this is how I see the pond from my cottage window:

So a few trees will have to give their way, but I'll make sure I can easily see what's happening there.

And that is from back yard:

Because it was dug on the T joint of the channels it got a name of: BIKINI BEACH. And from birds view it's nothing else but bikini indeed.

The channels empty in the time of drought but I will build a "monk" on the end of it so I could have the pond full all the time. That's a metal frame for a start.

Ok, I can never stop talking about this with so much things happening and the fish and the wildlife, the ups and downs, the never ending fight with weeds and stuff. But let me grab a cup of coffee and I'll show you THE SWAMP

 

[milius2]

Oh, two photos I found from the first dug:

 

[milius2]

It is not much to see when there is no water. But lets have a look at another pond on my fathers property. Many many years back people were digging up peat in this boggy swamp and that left it unusable for farming. Not much water was here, but about 2ha was still un-accessible swamp. 15 years back my father dug here first pond and since then it became an attraction point to all the family. It's on a very private location, but still not far from home. On one side it's the swamp and a river on another. This is where I spent my summers fishing, cleaning and building things from local and most of the time - free materials. Because of it remoteness no-one wanted to invest in posh settings as often we would find that unwanted visitors have damaged the benches and tables, break off trees and trow things into water. But as time went by we build a small sauna in a old metal garage, some makeshift terrace and a seating area and a kitchen and some beds in another metal garage. We choose those because they were cheap and fool proof, no-one could get into the building or lite them on fire. But those days are long gone and the visitors are now quite the opposite. More and more people come to spend their time not destroying, but enjoying and helping us to take care of the place. And there is a lot to take care, the weeds to cut, trees to plant and bridges to take care of. Everyone helps with materials, so we don't have to buy much more than nails. This was 5th digging project of the Swamp and was the most difficult one. Draining of the whole system was needed because:

1. We wanted to get rid of the pike that took over the pond
2. We needed to build a dam on one side of the pond where it connected to the swamp. A lot of predators uncontrolled could get in and out of the ponds so did the biggest fish. They would find a safe heaven there but we could not get to them. We where feeding a lot of wildlife but rarely ever got to enjoy good trophy.

So late last year we dug a trench all the way to the river and buried about 140 meters of pipe. The pictures are on another pc, but that was very muddy and difficult job with us stuck in 12-14 feet deep trench for 3 days in a row. Then after another two weekends in the mud finally we got the setup going and drained the pond empty. And just two days back the excavator came and did the so much needed dam. Cleared and extended the pond, so now I think we have about 0.5ha of water surface with our own private island Have a look at the photos. It is difficult to show the scale and I will post some once we get it filled up. With a soaring muscles, drained nerves and lots of sleepless nights I can be nothing but proud of what we managed to do.

So here is us finishing the draining point. A bridge to support the adjustable well:

Me in the orange


And here the same point an the very left:

Turning right:

On the right side you can see the dam that was built and beyond there is the swamp. It is at least 2ha of complete wilderness and no-one ever enters there. A paradise for many species of birds and predators.

Construction of the island. The guy in the excavator is quite a nuts

The main bridge and the living quarters:

Materials gathered for new fences to protect babies from palling in the pond:

The governor overseeing the works and helping with whatever is needed Should loose some weight.

This is the meanest machine you can get around here, costing 60 Euro/hour and only it makes projects like that possible...


Ok, so now we wait for the water, wait for the summer and for fish and plant to come back. Lets hope my lilies survived the draining and lets hope we can somehow manage the pike fish.

Fancying a pond anyone???