Creating a Lake

[sr160009]

WOOOOW 1000 replies on this thread that has to be a record!!!!!!!!!!

Congrats on an awsome thread!!!!

 

[jinman]

We're really enjoying watching the lake come to life and seeing the changes. Theres' no telling what it will look like when everyone gets here for the party, but it should just keep getting better!!

Eddie

Eddie, I have waded through old muddy, slimy ponds while seining for minnows and walked through swampy lake bottoms in this area and never seen a leach, much less had one get on me. I'm not saying they aren't more prone to be in your area, but I've never heard of them being a problem in North Texas.

I'm getting a kick out of watching the kids having a good time at your lake. With a little supervision and some ideas from time-to-time, kids are totally entertained by learning and showing others what they've found. Your pictures are keepers. Tell Steph that her dragonfly picture makes me jealous.

Now to make you jealous...
Here's a picture I took this last Sunday afternoon when Kathy's oldest son brought his kids up to fish. They only caught one fish, but it's a whopper. It won't be long until you hear screams of delight from your kids as they catch fish like this out of your lake.

 

[EddieWalker]

Wedlingisfun,

I don't think that was a leopard frog. We have the same frogs in our small pond and Steph took a few pictures of them that are easier to see. There heads are more pointy and they have a smoother skin that apears to be one solid color. They also seem to really prefer being in the water.

We have quite a few leopard frogs on our home. They like to hang out on the side of the house, near the lights. I've never seen them in the water, but just on the house. There eyes seem allot bigger then the green mystery frong.

We also have some pretty good sized toads that hang out under the lights.

Here are a few pics,
Eddie

 

[UpstateNYMarine]

Eddie,

It has taken me about four nights of reading (the fiance grabs a book in bed and I pick up the laptop to read about this lake construction project) but I just finished it here at work this morning. Brother this is great...don't ever tell a Marine he can't do something. I just took orders (I'm a marine as well) to upstate NY and my fiance and I bought 40 acres up here. We are currently building our home (just got the utilities trench in) and I can't wait to get started on a pond of my own. I'll have lots of questions in the future but after reading your thread I'm sure this is an undertaking that I want to try.

First Step: procurement of tractor has already been accomplished (just bought a new JD2320). I know I can't dig a whole pond with this but it will give me a good start on it along with other projects on the honey-do list. My first question (so that I can get my planning well underway) is on location. My land is a little hilly but flat for the most part where I want my pond. But not too far is a deep ravine with a small creek (pronounced crick by us yankees) at the bottom. Can I simply dig a large hole (pond) and run my overflow, drainage etc. through a ditch to the ravine (with anti-seep collors etc.) and have no need for a dam? I hope that I worded that right. I will try and get a picture or two here as soon as this last bit of snow melts from this freak snowstorm we had Sunday night. I swear that seasons don't really apply to upstate NY.

Semper Fi,
Mike

 

[EddieWalker]

Pat,

I've wanted to attract purple martins here for awhile. I've read a bunch of those martin websites and of couse, the sites selling the marting homes, that all say how good they are at catching mosquitoes. I never even thought to question this as it seemed like such a wonderful thing. Now I have my doubts and have pretty much abandonded any interest in making or buying some purple marting homes. I'll still make some bat houses and some wood duck homes, but that's about it for homes.

I do have quite a few swallows that spend the day catching flying bugs and drinking from my pond. At times, there can be over 100 of them sitting on the power line above the pond!!! It's an amazing show to watch them fly around!!!!

Cliff,

I never thought about what dragon flies eat. It's always been one of those things that never entered my mind. No that I know they eat mosquitoes, I'm loving dragon flies!!!!

Rob,

Thank you for the nice compliment. I've learned more by everyone here at TBN with there help and sugestions then I could have possible picked up from books or searching online. One of the best parts of this is when somebody brings up a question that I never considered, like the leeches.

If I didn't have this site, I think I wold have made the bottom of the lake nice and smooth. I never had any plans for the two peninsulas, and I hate to admit this, but the original location before I started digging, for the spillway was over the top of the dam. The things I was going to do wrong, along with the things I've changed or modified because of this thread are what made it what it is.

Thank you again to everyone for all your help. I really do appreciate it.

BTDT,

In time, I plan to circle the lake with lights. I have some ideas on how I want it to look, but for now, it's just a bunch of day dreaming. hahaha I hadn't considered an electric bug zapper, but now that you mention it, I like it. I even have a few trees that overhang the water a small amount that would work perfectly!!! Thanks.

sr160009,

1,000 plus replies does kind exceed anything I ever imagined when I started this thread. Even more amazing to me is that it's received over 90,000 views and theres still so much more that I want to do with it that there's no telling how long this will last. I'm assuming that from all the replies and help I'm getting from everyone, that all of you are enjoying it as much as I am.

Jim,

That's a fantastic picture of your grand kids!! That fish is HUGE!!! And you're right, I'm very exited for the day when we can pull something like that out of Lake Marabou!!!!

I think the kids are spoiled rotten living here. It's not the toys or the things they have, but the experiences they have from living out here. We fish in our small pond all the time. We hike our trails and they get to run wild, throw rocks, break sticks and splash around in the mud. There are vines in some of the trees that they have used as swings. The trails are full of there bicycle and peddle cart tracks. And they are SOOOO exited about seeing the wildlife!!!!! They both want to mow the grass, help out with projects and spend time with us outdoors. Our special meals on weekends are hotdogs cooked over the fire in our front yard!!!

Here's a few pics of the kids.

Eddie

 

[EddieWalker]

Mike,

Semper Fi!! I was in from 83-88 and loved it.

I don't know if I'd recomend to anybody to build there own lake unless you have allot of patience. When I first started it, I thought I'd do a little hear and there when I had some extra time. It was just clearing the land and outlinine the area it would cover. At most, I thought 3 acres would be about it with a small dam. Around here, stock tanks have dams on them that are barely four feet across at the top and a foot or two above wateline. I thought that would be easy.

Things changed after I started and it sat for awhile. Then things changed again and I started getting the itch to start on it again.

It took a full year longer to finish then I imagined. It's much bigger, deeper and better too!!! I took out more trees then I thought possible and moved more dirt then I can calculate. The dozer is what made it possible. I both hate it and love it. It wouldn't have been possilb without having it, but I can't wait for the day that I sell it.

I also have a smaller 3/4 acre pond that started out as a low mud hole from some guys who were stealing dirt from the land before I bought it. It would hold a foot or so of water for awhile after a rain, but othewise, it was an ugly low spot.

I spent two solid months digging it out with my backhoe. I hauled dirt out of it one yard at a time and dumped it right next to the pond. In two months, I built up a huge pile of dirt. Then the rains came and filled it up and my digging stoped. Overall, it's 5 feet deep with two holes that are over 8 feet deep. I had one area that was too soft for the backhoe, so I made it into an island. It took half a year to move the dirt pile to where I wanted it.

The problem the you'll have first, is what to do with the dirt you dig out? Making the dam bigger and thicker is the most common aproach to getting rid of dirt, but selling it is another good option. Hauling it to another location is the worse way, but also it's the only choice allot of the time.

When I was digging my lake, I had some local people come out and check out my progress. many of them suggested digging out the ground next to the creek and creating the lake that way. If I had a way to do this, I might have worked, but that would have meant moving four times as much dirt and finding a place to put it. It would have also meant working in mud as compared to hard packed clay. There is nothing worse then wet, muddy clay to work in.

If you can, daming up the canyon will be your cheapest and easiest way to create your pond. The next problem is creating your spillway. Imagine the most water possible coming down your creek and the build a spillway that can handle twice that amount. From what the news is saying, you guys in New York just went through one of the worse rains in history. Build for that and then some.

Looking back, I sort of rushed into building Lake Marabou, but delays and breakdowns slowed me down enough to made changes and improvements to my original plan. Take your time and get a solid plan. Check it out and be flexible in changing it. Go to Pond Boss Magazine Home Page! and read up on leaking dams and ponds that leak. Just do a search and you'll get a small idea of the nightmare a bad design, or a rush to build can create. I got lucky, very lucky.

Good luck and keep us posted. As you can tell by the size of this thread, people like ponds and all that goes into building them!!!

Eddie

 

[ding2520]

Eddie,
Here in MN the only frogs that you will see hanging out on the side of the house or any place off the ground are "tree frogs", at least that is what I have always heard them referred to as.

Natural Lands > Wetlands > Wetland Amphibians > Gray Tree Frog

Here is a link to a leopard frog and a look alike.

http://fwie.fw.vt.edu/VHS/pickerel vs leopard.jpg

 

[EddieWalker]

Here's the picture of my mystery plant. If it blooms, then I'll probably be able to figure it out. I'm thinking it's an Iris, but there are so many kinds that I might not ever figure it out.

The bird is also a mystery. It looks like a cattle egret, expcept for the color. It's not a lesser heron, we have lots of those, so this is a new one for us.

Eddie

 

[EddieWalker]

Looks like I've been wrong on my herons for awhile now. We have seen a Great Blue Heron from time to time, and he's absolutlye HUGE!!! It's almost like he's too big to fly and when he is flying, he's just sort of hanging there. He's just massive.

We also have allot of little blue herons that are about half the size of the great blue heron. The look similar, but the big one doesn't stick around for pictures, so we've never taken any of him, just lots of the little ones.

It turns out we've been totally wrong on this. The bird that we thought was a little blue heron is just a young great blue heron. Who knew they start out small? hahahaha

The bird I just posted a picture of is in fact a Little Blue Heron. We've never actually seen a real life little blue heron before, and had been misidentfying them for about a year now. Ooops. hahahaha

Eddie

 

[jinman]

Eddie, the leaves on your plant are too long for the traditional iris. It looks more like a gladiola to me. Is it a wild plant? It could be a hybrid iris, but if it's a native plant, that is not likely.