DIY Fishing lake re-do

[Ride_Klein]

Snow has melted, rain has come, rain left for a second and now the rain is back. Glad these rentals are by the equipment hour and not the day.

Good news is the water is coming up. Bad news is we missed a chance to do a lot of contouring on the bottom of both ponds. We have stuffed a few pieces of cover habitat and structure in, but we need it to dry out to do much more.


Combination of Runoff and the well from the little house pond coming into the big house pond.


The start of our channel at the big house pond that is now completely under water and too wet to work on. Almost slid the excavator into this spot and decided to wait for drier weather.


Big house pond as of yesterday. It is up about 2' from when we started. A few of the brush piles with a bunch more to come when it drys out. 3.5-4' of water left to fill her up.


Somebody shrunk a perfectly good skid steer. In reality this little thing straight gets stuff done. Pretty sure it has 19 squirrels running it, but they are angry and motivated.




Forage Fish showed up. The little house pond is getting bluegil and coppernose. It will be for kids and city folk. The big house pond is getting bluegill and bluegill and more bluegill, add to that a side of red ear. This pond has bass in it currently so we overstocked the forage a little bit and are hoping we can pile the cover/habitat to it next work weekend.


The dock at the cabin pond. Should just need styrofoam and it is good to go.


Water looks like its come up a bunch, but in reality 75 percent of the water you see is only 3-4 inches deep. It did kill our plans of doing any dirt work out in the middle. We're coming up with a new plan to include lots of rock/rubble piles and a few man made (read redneck renovated) pvc trees.

That's were we are now. Wish I had more pictures of rock piles, brush, trees, stumps, and other goodies, but it is wet and without those swimming hole rights we just can't work .

[Ride_Klein]

Still wet. Wet is good, but wet slows us down. These are the two creeks that run by/through the property.


Creek coming from the East


Creek that runs through the property. Unfortunately, both of these lakes were built a long time ago and whoever built them didn't really give either one enough drainage area. It takes a lot of rain to get good runoff, but we are finally getting it.


Big house pond from a long way away. Wigeon like crazy in the middle of it. They always hit this pond, but I can't give you any reason why.


Little closer view of the big house pond. Water has come up about 8 inches from the last set of pictures


Big house pond from the other side.


Pipe installed in the Big House pond dam. It's unlikely we'll keep it this tall, but this will give us the ability to use this pond to fill a duck marsh below it if we ever get around to building it.


Cabin Pond. Come up about 6" from the last set of pictures. We haven't been able to do anything to this yet except two real small brush piles. A shame because we could have really made the middle nice, but we'll focus our efforts on the edges when/if it dries out and do man made structure in the middle.

[Ride_Klein]

Finally found some rock we can use.





Hope to get it, the big tree trunk structure and a few more dense bait cover spots placed this weekend.

[TimH]

cool project.

[Ride_Klein]

Got most of the rock placed in the big house and cabin pond. No pictures today because we started on the fun part.....thinning the fish out. These boys were hungry and now we are too

[XBowHunter]

cool, fun project and dinner too !!!!

[Ride_Klein]

cool project.

cool, fun project and dinner too !!!!

Thanks. We are enjoying working on it.

[CassCounty]

Cool project. Thanks for sharing.

[highspeed]

Still wet. Wet is good, but wet slows us down. These are the two creeks that run by/through the property.

[ATTACH]701664[/ATTACH]
Creek coming from the East

[ATTACH]701665[/ATTACH]
Creek that runs through the property. Unfortunately, both of these lakes were built a long time ago and whoever built them didn't really give either one enough drainage area. It takes a lot of rain to get good runoff, but we are finally getting it.

[ATTACH]701666[/ATTACH]
Big house pond from a long way away. Wigeon like crazy in the middle of it. They always hit this pond, but I can't give you any reason why.

[ATTACH]701667[/ATTACH]
Little closer view of the big house pond. Water has come up about 8 inches from the last set of pictures

[ATTACH]701668[/ATTACH]
Big house pond from the other side.

[ATTACH]701669[/ATTACH]
Pipe installed in the Big House pond dam. It's unlikely we'll keep it this tall, but this will give us the ability to use this pond to fill a duck marsh below it if we ever get around to building it.

[ATTACH]701670[/ATTACH]
Cabin Pond. Come up about 6" from the last set of pictures. We haven't been able to do anything to this yet except two real small brush piles. A shame because we could have really made the middle nice, but we'll focus our efforts on the edges when/if it dries out and do man made structure in the middle.

Cool Project. Good to see that gap is closed in the last pic.

[nimrodtracy]

Great thread and project

[CrookedArrow]

RK, you have some very deep pockets man. Looks awesome. If you need to adopt a 48 year old let me know. I'm in like Flynn

[Ride_Klein]

Cool Project. Good to see that gap is closed in the last pic.

Can't have the cows getting in.

Great thread and project

Gracias sir

RK, you have some very deep pockets man. Looks awesome. If you need to adopt a 48 year old let me know. I'm in like Flynn

I'm just the brains of this operation.

[CrookedArrow]

lol

[Ride_Klein]

[ATTACH]705057[/ATTACH]
Had to open the gate so we could get into the field today.

[ATTACH]705058[/ATTACH]
Looking back North towards the Cabin at the cabin pond

[ATTACH]705059[/ATTACH]
One of many trees to come

[ATTACH]705060[/ATTACH]
slabs

[ATTACH]705061[/ATTACH]
brush pile

[ATTACH]705062[/ATTACH]
What do you do with a galvanized trough that has a hole it it? We'll see if this works

[ATTACH]705063[/ATTACH]
brush, slab, trough

[ATTACH]705064[/ATTACH]
more slabs, and a thirsty dog

[ATTACH]705065[/ATTACH]
Still a long way to go at the cabin pond.

[ATTACH]705066[/ATTACH]
Turned the water on. 2" pipe running wide open, hardly making a dent.

[Ride_Klein]

[ATTACH]705069[/ATTACH]
I call this death valley. Can't wait to drag a line between the two.

[ATTACH]705070[/ATTACH]
Shooting bench off the cabin porch. Hard to see in the picture, but targets out to 400 yds currently.

[ATTACH]705071[/ATTACH]
The bar is stocked. Time to send the heavy equipment back to the yard, pray for major rain, and start making the "man made" habitat.

Anybody have some suggestions for man made habitat that's easy to place via boat?