Building a 5 Acre Bass Pond!! (Day 3)

folks at home welcome back to the five acre pond build part three if you missed the first two i'll put a link down below and i suggest watching those two first but today we brought in the big boy i nicknamed this guy the moving company because it can move a lot of dirt and fast i don't know if the video does this guy justice right here but these wheels are probably about eight foot tall that is one giant machine makes my tractor look tiny over there so last week we started the process of filling our core trench with compacted clay and it's a time consuming process because you have to spread a layer out and then compact it by coming back over it with a roller and it took us almost a week to get that trench filled up because in our particular pond layout we have a long l-shaped dam and that took around 250 dump truck loads of clay to get that trench compacted but the guys are working fast to get that filled in today because although we got lucky that hurricane elsa didn't come towards alabama we're getting a lot of rain from it and we definitely want to get that trench filled in before the storm hits so we got every truck available dumping clay and they're hauling it in fast and here comes the rain and rain like this will completely shut a project down and hopefully it's just for today but if we do get one of those tropical storms or hurricanes it could shut us down for a week to two weeks so there's some good and bad with this situation the bad is that we don't have our drain pipe installed so in a typical pond build all of this rain water would have nowhere to go and it would keep everything slick and unworkable but the good news is that all of that red and brownish area is still our sandy soil so it's going to allow that water to seep down through it and it should allow this area to dry up pretty quick so we just got our piping delivered for the pond but unfortunately we got bad news all of that heavy rain has completely shut down our roads we're gonna have to let them dry out completely rework them before we can get back to hauling any more clay now that the weather's got the hauling shut down it makes this the perfect time to install our overflow drain pipe all right we just shot some levels out here and this is where the pipe is going to go through the dam definitely one of the most important parts about building the dam and making sure you get that whole area secured off because you got the dam coming this way and you're actually punching a hole through the dam to put that pipe and here's a good example why we had to haul in clay we got a ton of rain and it seeped right through all of our sandy soil but everywhere we spread the clay out it's holding water so that's a good look at what the bottom of the pond's gonna look like here's a closer look at the pipe and the plates they have to weld onto it pipe will go straight through those guys and they'll weld them right on now the guys are bringing in the pipe and getting it set and it's actually going to be three different 35 foot sections of pipe that they're gonna have to weld together and that's just the throughput pipe that goes through the bottom of the dam because the base of our dam is going to be around 95 to 100 feet wide and they're not going to put the vertical what they call a riser pipe in until later in the project because that actually is what sets the water level and you want to make sure you have all of your shallow banks your dam built and everything before you finalize that water level so now he's getting those pipes welded together and then coming in with the anti-seip collars got everything installed and it's looking good you have to ride that fine line of doing everything right and compacting it to keep water in the pond and then letting it out if you get those heavy rains to keep it from going over the top of the dam had a group of deer come through later that night to see their new watering hole and i think they're getting excited so we can't build the dam up until we can haul more trucks of clay in so now we're going to start excavating the shallow end of the pond and right now our plan is that anywhere in the pond that is less than six feet deep we're going to dig that area out and add that dirt on the back side of the dam to help us get that slope and the reason we're cutting six feet out of those banks is because we're going in with a two foot clay blanket which is going to leave us four feet of water in the shallow parts of the pond but with ponzi size you can have a drought and your water level may go down one to two feet and that would still leave us two feet of water during the hottest parts of the year you never want those water levels to get too low because that's when the sun can penetrate through and you'll start getting extra vegetation and algae growth and things like that that you didn't want but this is the stage where you can start adding contour and different looks to the pond because when you're building the dam everything's pretty much in a straight line or in our case an l shape but in the shallow areas that's where we can go in and add pockets and coves and points and not only do the bass love it they'll move up in the pockets and coves during the spawn but it also looks a lot better it looks more natural when you give it some shape moved a pretty good amount of dirt that pile right there is probably about 10 to 12 foot high about six feet down here and check this out here's a look at the oak throne and after all that rain it washed a lot of the dirt out from down there so you have even more exposed roots right there that's even tall enough a bass could probably swim right in through there i'm sure they're gonna try it with all the bait that's gonna be piled up in there still my favorite piece of the project so far that is cool let's take a look and see how far along the peanuts are coming oh yeah we'll be long now now it's time to bring in a moving company and start hauling some dirt so for those of you looking to build a pond in the future this is one of those important factors that determines what the cost of your pond is going to be and it's how much dirt you have to excavate and what can get expensive is if you have to dig too much dirt out of the pond and then you have to haul it off site the way we designed our pond we're only going to have to excavate the shallow end of the pond to get it to that six foot depth and then everything deeper than six feet all of the dam area we don't have to excavate at all and because our pond is going up a hill had we expanded the size to maybe say seven or eight acres our cost would went way up because not only are you having to dig all that dirt out we would had to haul it off-site so as you can see we got some pretty good-looking soil right here and it has two good uses the first thing we're going to do with it as i mentioned is build the slope off the back side of the dam and the reason this is good is because it's cheap material definitely cheaper than bringing clay in and you don't need clay necessarily on the back side of the dam because the water is never going to make it that far and the second thing it's really useful for is after we build the dam all the way up we'll come back and add a layer of this good soil on top and then we'll put all of our grass seeds down because it can be extremely hard to grow grass and clay but if you have a nice layer of this topsoil on top that grass will grow really quick and it'll help prevent your dam from eroding all right let's take a quick look at what he's dug out so far you got about a six to seven foot drop from here to there so after we get done hauling this out we're gonna come back in and structure the bank so maybe put some pockets and coves and if you can see there's kind of a high bank there and a high bank here and more of a ditch right in here that's where a lot of the watershed comes in so this would be a perfect place to kind of dig this out a little bit more right here and make it a pocket like a little shallow spawning platter or a pocket that the bass will use in the spring so you definitely want to use the natural edges and the lay of the land because it'll keep you from having to move a lot of extra dirt and here's something funny the guy driving the moving company tracked his miles and he drove 30 miles in two days basically in the same circle he was on the daytona five acre so we got more than halfway done with a shallow end excavation i'll give you a quick look at what it looks like right up here oh yeah we probably easily have an eight foot wall right here which is good to me the deeper the better you don't want it too shallow we'll have some shallow coves throughout but you definitely don't want a real shallow pond now if we get a heavy rain over the weekend now that we got this drain pipe installed all the water should come right down here and go right through the back side of the dam and drain down into the creek there's the drain coming out of the back side of the dam so all of that dirt excavated from the shallow end was put here on the back side of the dam and you can see there's probably 15 feet of that dirt so we're still going to come in and smooth it out and make it a nice gentle slopes now it's time to check out the game cameras it looks like we got a little bachelor group of bucks coming through they're still growing their antlers and it seems like they grow them a lot later in the year here in south alabama versus the rest of the country oh and it looks like one of them spotted the game cam but check this little guy out we have a bobcat that's been hanging around liz's garden and we finally got a little video of him and now it's time to feed mr moby man he is getting big but watch how aggressive he is in this video i don't know how he knows that it's summertime because his aquarium temperature stays pretty much right around 72 year round but this time of year man he is extremely aggressive on the top water blowups [Music] you gotta love it got him man i sure am going to miss these late night feedings when we put him in the backyard pond but with his appetite he's outgrowing this tank quick [Music] and check out this big caterpillar sarah found out at the farm he loves eating the green leafs on liz's vegetables we're gonna see if he makes a cocoon and turns into a butterfly now it's time for bonnie and clyde's weekly shiner feeding and i guess i should say the bluegills too because they probably eat just as many as the bass do [Music] look out yep the bluegills are still getting big eating shiners and pellet food and i can almost guarantee you that two of them are over a pound in here all right folks that's going to wrap up today's video make sure to hit that subscribe button so you can follow along with this pond series we hope to be wrapping it up in the next couple of weeks and also be sure to leave a comment on what you think we ought to name our new five acre pond down below because whoever we choose we're going to fly man to fish with us once we get the pond stocked but i hope you all enjoyed this video and we'll see you next bonnie time clyde were pretty looking people but i can tell you people they were the devil's children

Channel: BamaBass

Views: 311,615

Rating: 4.9685411 out of 5

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Id: Ii_C0gu14Wg

Length: 11min 8sec (668 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 11 2021