Bruce's Journal

[Bruce]

Right @Latestarter !! Why should @CntryBoy777 waste his time working the other 90%??

I would like to dredge the muck out of the pond, at least some of it. I guess I would have to be careful not to get rid of all of it or the fish and frogs would have nowhere to winter over. It would be nice to have more water volume for dry spells. This is a picture of it summer of 2012. Sadly, all that dry area proved to be a good seedbed for grasses that shouldn't be there and cattails. Constant fight to keep it from becoming a meadow.

 

[Latestarter]

I'd be more concerned about going too deep and removing the clay base that must be there to hold the water in in the first place. I mean with your rocky soil, would a man made pond exist if it wasn't "lined" either with artificial material or a dense clay (or be naturally replenished)?

I guess you could remove the "dried out" end enough for the remaining water (in pic, at end of summer) to run into it after being deepened, then follow up with deepening the deep end. I agree, if I had a pond, I'd want it deeper than what your appears to be. Imagine ice fishing in your back yard!

 

[Bruce]

The stuff I want to get out is, I think, decades and decades of silt and muck. Step in and lose your boot. I don't know the shape of the ledge but you can see the edge of it in the foreground. I'm guessing whoever dug this thing started with a natural wet area over the ledge. I've pulled some of the growing stuff starting at the exposed ledge and so far have found only more ledge angling down. The "soil" there has so far been pretty shallow. Given there are ledge "peaks" to the west, I bet one could make a much bigger pond though I'm not planning to do so.

All the "soil" around this place is clay near as I can tell so I ASSUME the "walls" to the north and west are just stuff that was pulled out from around or within the pond area and heaped up.

 

[Mike CHS]

The lack of a pond is about the only thing I don't like about our place. There have been two ponds dug but neither hold water. The smaller of the two I have already leveled off and filled in and the larger one will be filled in not far in the future.

 

[CntryBoy777]

When ours was built back in '92-94, it was 18' at the deep point on the levee.....with all the trees around the leaves and debris that have fallen into it thru the years probably has had an effect on that depth....but, with the carp we have in there they may have kept it to a minimum, hopefully. I'll have to keep an eye out for them this year cause it's getting close to time to replace them....they are hybrids and don't reproduce and live in the 35yr range. It is stocked with largemouth bass, bream, and catfish and has been a pretty productive small pond with enough predators that the fish continue to grow to good size.

 

[Pastor Dave]

You may need to snorkel down there and take some measurements.

 

[Baymule]

 

[Pastor Dave]

I learned SCUBA in an IN "lake" at a state park that wasnt any deeper than that. It was kinda cool. We did a cool water dive later at that same pond when the air temp was 45 or 50F deg., and it was a lot different.

 

[Bruce]

I learned SCUBA in the pool at the Y. Open water dives to complete certification were off the So. Cal coast and Catalina Island. Of course that was 45 years ago. I tried diving here once about 35 years ago. Lots different in a lake with maybe 15' visibility.

 

[Pastor Dave]

I bet. I read abt currents and such. No experience. My biggest water was a quarry pit dive. The water was clean and blue-green. Visibility was great. I only went down abt 45-50 feet. I grabbed a buddy's fin that was using a propelled underwater jet ski sort of apparatus you might see in a James Bond movie. I didn't mind diving brown, murky ponds because my intention was training for rescue and recovery while I was on FD and EMS. I never got that far in my hours or training though.