Building a 5 Acre Bass Pond!! (Day 1)

[Music] [Music] folks at home welcome back and today we're finally going to start our new five-acre pond build out at our farm but if you're new to the channel almost three years ago we built this backyard pond for our two pet bass bonnie and clyde we've had a lot of good times with a minute but we've fattened them up over the years on a heavy diet of shiners and toads so our goal for today is to build them a bigger body of water out at our farm and also we have the most aggressive bass on planet earth named moby we started him out in a 55 gallon tank moved him to a 300 gallon tank and as soon as bay and clyde go to the new pond he's gonna move into the backyard pond so now let's head out to the peanut farm and over the past several months we've been doing the engineering and watershed studies and core drilling and everything to get set up and ready to start building but first we got to take care of one problem when we bought the place it had a beautiful 150 year old oak tree and unfortunately hurricane sally knocked it over this past fall and it's actually laying in the pond location so we hired a tree company to come out and help us remove it and we really hated to see this tree fall down but our plan is to use every single bit of it so we're going to start out cutting the tops out of all the tree limbs setting them aside and then after we build the pond we're going to move all of them back in and use those as fish structure and this tree had some really big limbs so we're going to cut all of the long straight sections out of it and send those off to a wood mill and cut one-inch boards out of it because after we complete the pond build we're going to build a camp house here and we can use those one inch boards for hardwood flooring and panel boards and things like that [Music] room [Music] guys take a look at all these tree tops we have structure for days so all of these are going to go back into the pond after we build it and the coolest part about it all is that bonnie or clyde is probably going to make a home right here underneath one of these oak lambs so here's a good example of one of those longer limbs that we're sending off to get the one inch boards cut out of [Music] and so far i've been really impressed with the look of all the hardwood but now we're getting to the good stuff so we had a custom woodworker come out and show us exactly where he'd like us to make some cuts because we have about a 14 foot section of tree trunk here and we're going to cut some slabs out of it one of the things he likes to do is called a live edge oak slab and here's a quick look at what it looks like but we're going to use it to make an island top for a kitchen and also a big oak table got some pretty wood in there where was he right there on the tree but now here's where the trouble started so when the tree fell over about half of the tree trunk is buried in the ground so we had to bring a backhoe in just to scoop out all the dirt from around it so they could get the saw through then we have a three foot saw and it still can't cut around the diameter so we had to use some machinery to actually break the core of the tree it took all day there's a size comparison right there and that's pretty big sarah's going to help us measure the diameter of it so we're looking at about 71 72 inches so we got a 71 inch diameter and a 14 foot tree trunk make some good slabs out of that so i'll keep you guys posted on how the woodworking turns out in future videos but now that we got all this tree business out of the way let's get started on the pond build all right folks got the bulldozer in here we started doing a little bit of grading work basically he's just pushing that dirt out down the length of the dam which is going to go to the tree line and then that way here's a look at this all he's doing is grading it out we're going to end up going in with a core trench where we dig out a hole and pack it in tight with clay throughout the length of the dam so this is one of the areas he was starting on first so this is naturally where all the watershed runs off on the property and one of the reasons we're building this pond but he started off pushing this dirt back there we're going to try to raise that up a little bit there at the base that way when we go in with our clay core we don't have to go much over 15 feet but man look at the erosion at this place a lot of that came from hurricane sally just came just a lot of all the watershed from all those acres up there just came rushing down through here and you can see there's a little bit of clay down there but it's not good enough to hold water maybe somebody had a septic system and lived here years and years ago don't tell them what we're gonna find definitely wasn't expecting to run into rock and gravel though it looks like it's concrete so the one thing i've been really impressed with is how much dirt this heavy equipment can move and move really fast so it probably only took him about 15 minutes to level out that eroded spot that i just showed you and you can see right there he just hit a little clay blanket and for those of you that may be interested in building a pond in the future one of the first things you need to do before you ever build the pond is do a core drilling sample and we did that several months back and we basically drilled down about 15 to 20 feet to see what types of soil are beneath the ground surface and obviously with ponds you want a good clay material that will hold water and unfortunately we had some clay on the property but it just wasn't enough and it was a little bit of a sandy clay so we're going to have to haul clay in for this entire project and a geotech will analyze these soil samples and tell you what type of dirt or material you have and if it'll hold water so the next job was getting the oak tree stump and all the roots out of the ground and let's just say when something's been there for over 150 years it doesn't want to budge so it took about 20 or 30 minutes of digging but he finally got it flipped over and this has to be one of the coolest things i've ever seen hey guys take a look at that it almost looks like that throne on the game of thrones so what we're gonna do is we're gonna leave it flipped over where the stumps on the bottom and all these roots are exposed up here at the top and can you imagine how many different bait fish and bluegills are gonna get up here in this root system and hide from all of the bass this is absolutely going to be one of the coolest pieces of structure that go into the lake all right got another piece of equipment in and check this bad boy out this is what they're going to use to pack the clay in that looks like one main machine right there now the next step in the pond building process is digging out a cord trench and we'll use that machine i just showed you to go back in and compact clay the entire length of the dam and we've got a pretty long dam for a five acre pond because of the way the land lays out all right folks gonna spend just a minute talking about the dam because it probably is the most important part of building a pond so this is called a core trench that's where we he just dug all of that out and the dam is going to start all the way up there on that hill go this direction to right there in that corner and then it's going to finish all the way up there where those tractors are at we basically have an l-shaped dam and in this core trench we're going to haul loads of clay in and use this machine to compact them in and we're basically just building a wall up right here i'm at the deepest part of the pond it's going to be about a 15-foot wall right here that makes up the dam and if you can imagine all that water is going to come flowing off that hill in here and this clay core and dam is what's going to stop it from going that way now when you build one of these dams you want to use a three to one ratio so we're going to go 15 foot high and that's going to be the top of the dam up there and so every foot you come down you want to go three foot out that way you make a nice even slope so our dam is going to finish over there at the tree line there's going to be a nice slope coming up that way we can still use a tractor and cut grass there's also a slope that's going to come down into the pond area that'll finish right over here and the reason it's so important is if you have any failures in this clay core or dam all that water and pressure will bust through and the entire pond will drain and you'll lose all your fish and bonnie and clyde will be swimming somewhere down there in the creek now as you can see to fill up this entire core trench plus build it all the way up that's going to take a lot of clay so normally that would be all you need to complete the dam you stop the water from coming this way and it settles right here well because we don't have good clay out here we got a little sandy soil we're also going to have to haul clay in and put a two foot clay blanket all the way out across the pond so we're stopping it from coming this way and we're stopping it from seeping down through the ground so all in all we're looking at about 850 dump truck loads of clay that's going to get quite expensive but that's what's necessary to hold water in this particular pond so we're going to finish digging the core trench out to the top of that hill next week and we're going to start hauling in clay and packing it tomorrow another thing you'll be seeing in upcoming videos is you don't want to make a pond with just a bowl bass like plenty of structure and humps and depth changes so you can see here it's just about a three foot drop but bass love stuff like this and that's where they're going to hold so we're going to be building points and ledges and drop-offs and things of that nature here in upcoming videos as well as putting the structure and things like the game of thrones stump into the pond so that's going to be the fun part but it's not going to happen till the end so we're digging this pond in the middle of a peanut field and as soon as we started busting the soil up and exposing those peanuts look who's coming in to eat them doves and squirrels are flocking in and having a peanut party we also have some interested cows looking to see if they have a new watering hole you like cows and balls hey bull would you like to come home you want to bring the bull home i think he said i'm out of here tell him and one of the fox squirrels out in the middle of the peanuts having lunch here's a quick look at the game cams the deer still hitting the soybean field antlers are starting to come up and whenever we leave in the afternoons they pile in well milo said he approves he's already marked his territory and sarah thinks i just built her the biggest sand pit in the world you like it sarah yeah go ahead and jump milo all right we're out here in sarah's sunflower field man they've grown up big time liz just picked our sunflower bouquet wish her a happy birthday our birthday is on june 28th milo's getting hot so it's time to get out of here and we can't have one of these videos without feeding mr moby okay yeah and once we get the pond built and stocked we're going to bring some of our subscribers in to fish with us and the first subscriber that we're going to fly into fish with us is going to be the one that helps us name our new pond so for every video that we put out in this pond build series you can leave a comment down below and whenever the series is complete we're going to select one of your suggestions and name the pond after it so be sure to leave those comments down below throughout the entire series and try to think of something unique and before the video ends i want to thank all of my subscribers because if it wasn't for you guys we would have never been able to make this dream come true a lot of you have been with us since the beginning when we first caught bonnie and clyde so thanks a ton for all of your support we're going to try to give back to as many of you as we can and have a lot of fun out here on the farm in the future but hope you all enjoyed this video make sure you hit that subscribe button so you can follow along as it should be a very exciting series hope you enjoyed it we'll see you next and time were pretty looking people but i can tell you people they were the devil's children

Channel: BamaBass

Views: 676,087

Rating: 4.9344187 out of 5

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Id: zZ49jSdHKWs

Length: 13min 28sec (808 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 27 2021