Building a 5 Acre Bass Pond!! (Day 2)

folks at home welcome to day two of the five acre bass pond build if you missed day one i'll put a link down below and i recommend you watching it it'll explain some things like why we have this big game of thrones looking oak throne but today we're going to be building the dam up and we got a haul 850 dump truck loads of clay in so we got to do a little road work before we get started now each load of clay weighs about 63 000 pounds so we want to make sure these roads are in good shape so we're gonna add about 10 truckloads of crushed concrete we'll take that get that felt laid out cover this road up we'll be ready to start hauling the clay in got peanuts here cotton there now the last step is to get it all packed in and we should be good to go so this is where we left off in the last video we dug out a core trench the entire length of the dam and the first thing we're going to do today is fill that trench with clay and get it all compacted in and we had some rain come through over the weekend and the good news is that even the soils that are here are actually holding water not as good as clay but that's still a good sign now the first dump truck of clay has arrived and that is the key ingredient without this we would not have been able to build this pond one down only 849 to go so to build this damn we're basically just taking a bulldozer and spreading that clay in thin layers but like you can see right here some of that clay is still chunked up so before you add another layer you need to compact the clay and that's where this bad boy right here comes in and not only is it rolling it and compacting it but it also vibrates at the same time so it's pretty important to make sure you get your clay compacted right so we brought the geotech back out and they can use this instrument to tell you how well it's getting compacted and to measure the moisture in the clay and so far our readings look pretty good so in the last video you saw us cut up our fallen oak tree and we still have plans to use every piece of wood and even though it took all day we finally got the trunk of it loaded on a trailer and delivered to the woodworkers so let's go to his meal and check it out so this guy does a lot of custom woodwork and he's got some really nice pieces here and here's a look at one of the saws he uses but here's a look at our big oak compared to another tree he said it may be the biggest tree he's ever had here at this place all right we got our first load of wood cut this is what came out of all the limbs not the trunk but we're gonna use it to make hardwood flooring got a lot of wood here he also cut a couple of thicker slabs but we're going to cut big slabs out of the trunk and we're going to use all this for flooring and that type of thing but what you have to do is stack it up and put little gaps in between it and let it air dry and it may take up to a year to dry if you don't put it through a kiln just show you what it looks like we're not even quite halfway through yet but we got some nice even boards that makes it a lot easier to space it out but got a lot more to go and when it's about 95 degrees outside today definitely makes it a job but man i'm really impressed with the wood grain and overall look of this old red oak out here working on the wood and look who decides to show up i guess i attract turtles the second one this week this active little guy right here look at him what's up little buddy oh he just spotted me so yeah the last one i wasn't 100 sure if it was a snapping turtle this one is not a snapping turtle huh look at that grasshopper taking a free ride on his back so let's see if we have any peanuts yet they're young but they are growing we're gonna have peanuts for days here in a little while all right just got the last of it stacked and man that was a job right there but it's gonna make some nice pieces so last thing we're gonna do is just cover that up put some tin or something over it and let it air dry so we're getting pretty close to the corner of the dam so we busted it through to let that water out and get it nice and dry before we add the clay i bought this dome camera and had it installed back during deer season and on the side note it has one of the best zooms i've ever seen on a camera but my whole intention for getting it was to live stream this entire pond build from start to finish but i had two problems the first problem is the internet speed isn't quite good enough out here in the country to do a live stream the upload speed just sitting quite there but elon musk has developed starlink which should be making it to our area in the next couple weeks so if we can get that star link i'll put up a live feed where you guys can watch it every day the second thing i didn't take into account is how much this heavy machinery vibrates the ground i'm 100 yards away from that machine and it's still shaking the whole building i think it would set off a seismic alarm when that packer turns the vibrators on the pitcher quality goes downhill quick but i'll do my best to stabilize it so we got the guys chugging along here building the dam one of our goals is to deliver 50 dump truck loads of clay per day and get it compacted and so far we've been keeping up with schedule and we got another guy on the excavator finishing out digging the core trench on the other end of the dam and here's a good overhead view of it this is the first time i've been involved with a pond build but one of the things that kind of surprised me is how wide the dam is you can see the core trench that's kind of the center of the dam but as you get up steeper and steeper and 15 feet will be our highest point you have to go out three times as wide so we'll go out 45 feet from the center of that core to make a nice gradual slope but you can see the dam is pretty narrow when we got started and now right here as you get to the bend and the highest part of the dam that's when it gets really steep and wide and living down here in the bay area we get thunderstorms almost every day and that completely shuts the project down for the day and at night the deer like to come out and check out the new additions to their home there's only one thing to do when you get hot out here building the ponds let's build a fire cook some connecticut sausage with sarah what do you think sarah that's a pretty cool little grill though you got firewood or charcoal whatever you got you swing that over it [Music] you know if you build a campfire of any sorts or any kind of fire the ladies are going to make s'mores over here at liz's garden she got her first watermelon and right over here outside her garden she's got this little tool shed and look what likes to hang out in it green tree frogs for days moby would be in heaven little guys everywhere so while we watch these guys build i'm going to answer a couple questions that i got from the first video one of the most asked questions is are we going to tag bonnie and clyde when we put them in the pond absolutely we are since there's going to be other bass in there as well we definitely want to know if we ever catch bonnie or cloud in the future and also track their progression and how big they get so right now the only thing i've found is the tracker that you can put behind their fin and we'll probably just put a tag that says bonnie on one and a tag that says cloud on the other but they do make some digital trackers but i don't think any of them are suitable for our use in a pond i've seen where they track whales and sharks in the ocean but i think eventually the transmitter has to come to the surface to get the signal so i don't think there's a way we could track them in our pond but if any of you know of a digital tracker to where we could see their exact location in the pond leave a comment down below and i got a lot of questions about the cost of the pond at the end of the entire series i may go back and do a total cost because a lot of that's still changing day to day but one of the most expensive things for this particular pond is the clay hauling all of that clay in and clay is pretty cheap itself it's just hauling it but for those of you that may be purchasing land in the future to build a pond on one of the things you can quickly do is have one of those geotex sample the soil in the area you intend to build the pond and they can tell you right away whether or not the clay or materials there will hold water and in our case liz and i like this land so much that we knew even if we had to haul the clay in to build the pond we were going to do it because the location was perfect for us but on a side note it is still pretty common for people to have to bring clay in just for the dam but not a lot of people do what we're doing in line the entire pond with clay which can get expensive and another question that we got a lot was about the timing of everything if the weather's good over the next three to four weeks we hope to complete the pond and then we just have to fill it up so we'll be using an underground well as well as all these tropical storms and thunderstorms we get every day and hopefully it wouldn't take very long to fill it up but what you typically do with a bass pond is you stock all of your bait fish first so your bluegills fat head minnows and threadfin chad they would all go in in the winter and you give them through the winter months to repopulate and establish their new home and then you typically go in with a bass right after the following spawning season so that would be maybe next may or june once the little tiger bass get to about two inches in length but as far as bonnie and clyde going in they're definitely gonna be the first two bass to go in and we're gonna get them in after we stock it with bait and they're basically gonna be in heaven because they're gonna have all the food they can eat and absolutely zero competition all right time for our weekly feeding we got a thousand golden shiners ready to drop in so one good thing about the new pond build is it's actually gonna save us some money because we feed the fish in this pond a thousand golden shiners every week during the summer months but once you stalk the shad out in the new lake they'll repopulate on their own and we can probably go get some of them out of the new pond and bring them to the backyard pond for moby but also guys leave a comment if you'd like to see any of these other fish go to the new pond we're definitely not putting the crappie in there because you typically don't want a crappie in a bass pond because they don't mix too well during the spawn but we could potentially put a bluegill or two and maybe even some of the turtles so you can see this is one of our original teenage mutant ninja turtles coming out to feed and then our oldest turtle ranger had to get in on action all right and now it's time to feed the fish with the biggest appetite of all that is moby and something interesting i've caught on to over the years is we bring these shiners in from the outside pond and depending on the water temperature out there they either go straight to the top or straight to the bottom but i always prefer for them to go to the top because that's when we get to see those big blow ups and so does moby because whenever they go to the bottom like they did today he always gets a mouth full of rocks and he has to stop eating sort the rocks spit them out and then go back on attack mode got him so we finally got some good weather and those dump trucks start piling in quick and that allows us to make some progress we're about halfway through building the dam and in the next video we're gonna install the emergency spillway and overflow drain pipe but just like in the last video folks we need help naming this pond so leave a comment down below on what you think we should name it and at the end of the series we're gonna pick one winner and whoever left that comment we're gonna fly him out to come fish with us once we get our pond stocked and so far we've got a lot of good names but i'm not gonna decide until i've read all the comments throughout the entire series and you can also leave comments on other things we've gotten good suggestions on things we need to add to the pond and are probably going to do that so thanks for following along with this pond build series we appreciate all your input and feedback and hope you're enjoying it as much as we are but make sure to hit that subscribe button so you'll catch the next episode hope you enjoyed this one and we'll see you all next time [Music]

Channel: BamaBass

Views: 355,271

Rating: 4.9552946 out of 5

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Id: eb-WwV3FB1o

Length: 13min 19sec (799 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 05 2021