Building a 5 Acre Pond! (Hurricane Update)

folks at home welcome back to the five acre pond build and if you missed the previous videos in this series i'll put a link down in the description below and last week we added a variety of different structures to the pond including tunnels and different types of brush piles that would attract bait fish and some that would provide shade and we had already gotten the pea gravel set around the island and the oak throne set in place and one of the last things we needed was a good water source so we dug a well so we made a lot of progress over the past 10 weeks with this pond but unfortunately we won't have a lot of production this week because we're getting a lot of rain from hurricane ida now its path is directly at new orleans and you can see this is where we are on the map so we're supposed to get several inches of rain so before all of that comes i needed to get some erosion control in place so i went out and got some silt fencing and got that all trenched in especially in those watershed areas where i know we're going to get a lot of water flowing into the pond and also got these things called hay wattles that'll help slow that water flow down and then i went through and reseeded some areas that didn't have grass and covered those up with hay so at this point i've done all i can do to protect the pond and we got to leave the rest up to mother nature so a lot of you guys wanted to see a time lapse of the pond filling up with water so let's watch some of this footage as the rain starts rolling in and this is where i'm kind of torn obviously after you just built a pond you definitely want to fill it up that way you can move on to stocking it with fish and all the other good things that come with a body of water but the reason i'm on the fence about it is because i had a couple of other projects i wanted to do before the pond filled up one of them i had my guy ready to come in and build the dock but if this storm fills it up we're gonna have to go with the floating dock versus your traditional style wooden dock and then there were also a couple of other small projects that i wanted to do like welding the wire cage onto the vertical stand pipe right over the drain valve so if i ever opened up the valve to drain it our bass and bait fish wouldn't get sucked out of the pond but at this point there's nothing i can do so i'm just going to sit back and accept whatever happens now we're on the east side of this hurricane so we're going to get a lot of the rain but it also comes through in bands so we got one band today that's coming through and then another tomorrow so over the course of two days they're projecting six to eight inches at our current location so the heaviest rainfall today was predicted to come through right before dark and last all the way up until midnight and i'll be interested to see how this camera picks that nighttime rainfall up because it does have night vision on it but man that is some heavy rain and we are starting to get flooding in our area and unfortunately it doesn't look like the night vision is going to do us any good whenever it's raining this much so we're gonna have to wait and see how it looks in the morning all right folks time for a pond update i'm out here in the middle of a hurricane i'm just in between bands it's not over but we did get a good break in the rain so all that straw i put down got washed out so no big deal on that looks like these did hold up pretty good it did wash out a little spot right there and let some water through got more water coming back here you can see some of that grass started to take before the rain came in but that right there is what i wanted it to do stop a lot of that from getting washed right down in there oh the silk fence definitely held up stopped a lot of silt from getting washed down in there so that was well worth it but it looks like most of the water has ran down there to the deep end let's take a walk around the pond and check it all out here's an area where we had a little bit of erosion and some silk got down in the pond you can see most of the banks holding up really good everywhere we got good grass but anywhere there's just one little strip of not so good grass that's where it washes down in and washes that silt right into the pond but so far everything's holding up pretty good just one little spot like this here and there hey we finally got grass growing on alcatraz island i like it so i'm really happy with this spot this is where all the water washes into the pond right here and you can see where it was starting to erode right before it hit our little protected areas right here it was rushing in got here silk fence stopped it and really nothing made it to the other side so i'm definitely happy with that i was worried about this area but the fence held up this didn't get washed out too bad because all that grass there so thankfully the damage report is pretty minor today and all of this straw actually held up and you can see the grass starting to poke through it all right this deepest wood pile is almost under water right now and it's not floating it doesn't look like so it looks like the bricks are holding it down got the bottom layer of the tunnel is basically submerged you can pretty much make a cast out here about got the bottom of it full but this is just the first band second band's supposed to be a lot worse i think i'm gonna ride it out over there in the little shed and try to document some of this we'll see how bad it gets all right now we're rolling on through the second day and the second band of storms and while we've gotten some heavy showers it's pretty crazy because just to the east of us and just to the west of us are getting hit really hard and you can see here on the radar map our pond has actually been right in between two bands for most of this storm we did get a tornado warning this morning but luckily that passed with no problems but i really hope all those people in new orleans are okay because we're hundreds of miles away from this storm and it's gotten pretty bad at times i can't imagine what it's like to be right there in the eye of the storm all right folks the calm after the storm the road's finally dried up enough for me to get back in here we definitely did not fill up which is probably a good thing and a bad thing you can see we've got about three feet of water back there in the deepest part that bottom layer of tunnels is just underwater drain valve completely submerged but all of this pretty much drained down into that deep end so the good part of all of this is we're building the pier right there so all of that is still dry so we can still go in with that typical dock setup that you see on most ponds and not have to use that floating dock so even though the hurricane missed us for the most part we got a lot of heavy rain on that second day those outer bands came back through and hit us and caused some erosion in some places so having this fence set up definitely helped and kept it from getting way out of hand but you can see there's some spots like that right there that definitely need to be fixed so i'm gonna go back in fill these in with dirt reseed them and hopefully we don't get another big major storm this year and here's a quick overhead view all right folks got some wooden signs made that i'm pretty excited about let's check them out first up we got clyde's cove had to have one for bonnie and clyde next up the oak throne 150 year old oak tree that fell over look at the detail in that artwork that's pretty cool had to get one made for alcatraz island man that looks good and last but not least bonnie's by you with the bass symbol there man i'm really excited about the way those turned out we use that game of thrones font on the oak throne and in that famous alcatraz island font so here hopefully soon as soon as the pond fills up when you look out across here you're not going to see anything but water from here all the way across so what i want to do is put like for instance that oak throne sign i want to have it sticking up above the water level so when you're out here fishing or even just standing on the bank you always know where that oak throne is now the alcatraz island that's gonna be the only one that would naturally be out of the water but hey you gotta mark the island and then clyde's cove sign will be over there and i haven't even shown you guys where bonnie's bayou is all right clyde's cove is just over there right around that bend and this is gonna be bonnie's bayou so the idea behind this area is just a shallow little pocket with a lot of stumps in it one of those that you'd really love throwing a topwater lure in so i got a bunch of that gnarly looking stuff kind of resembles root ball system like the oak throne but we're going to put it all through out here and actually that's the emergency spillway over there let's go check it out so once the water gets a foot and a half above that standpipe level it'll start flowing right out of this emergency spillway and we were supposed to come in and finish it this week but the trucks couldn't get in here with all the roads torn up so he's bringing in this rock mesh system that we're going to lay out right here and it's going to go down and bend around and go back down there to the creek and the main thing you want to do is not have that water go wash back behind your dam so he built it up right here a little funnel or tunnel right down there sending it towards the creek so the spillway and the dock will be in next week's video i'm liking the feel of bonnie's bayou topwater heaven i got those few pieces set out um i got one more big piece up there in that wood pile that it's gonna take the tractor to bring it in here all right i think i'm gonna leave it upside down just like i did with the oak tree makes these guys look small now so i got it anchored down with some cinder blocks got the bonnie's bayou sign moved over to here surprisingly this big stump has stayed upright and it looks like some silt or something washed in maybe out of this clay and helped bury those cinder blocks a little bit so that may actually stay standing all right now bonnie's by you as a wrap time to move on to the next project [Music] [Music] all right folks got the oak throne sign set i think it's a perfect match for the big oak throne i may have to get a little bit longer extension on it i got it good and secured in there right now but i think that may be a little under the water level so probably gotta get go a little bit higher with that one so let's talk about how we're gonna find everything once it fills up with water so we're gonna have the oak throne sign here we're always gonna know where that's at but all these other wood piles you're not gonna know where they're at once it fills up with water so some people talked about using gps coordinates to mark them that's a good idea but i got one that i think is a little bit better i'm gonna go in on all those wood piles and mark them with buoys so i'm gonna cut a lot of this string off and just leave just enough for the buoy to get up to the surface level because if you put too much string on there it may float over here or whichever way the wind's blowing but in this case i'll put about six feet of string on that log right there and then as it fills up it'll always mark my spot for me so we're going to do it to all the major piles one wood pile there wood pile there the tunnels another wood pile there and then one on the back side of that island and what you know it every wood pile is underwater we're about to get a little wet all right i'm out here with that bullseye structure just got this one tied on but just as a reference to how deep it is i'm out here pass knee-deep and we still have a lot of water level to go you can see we still probably got about five to six feet so it's a big drop off right here so you got the road bed right there five foot drop off and then another road bed right here so this is a nice little hole now my only concern is keeping that floating and not getting caught up in all this trash and not being able to float so i tossed it over there hopefully it'll stay out of the wood pile got that wood pile marked i'm just going to leave that buoy laying up here on the bank this water actually feels really good still a little muddy from the storm but it's nice and cool it's about 90 out here today all right i just tied off to that second row of tunnels there the bottom three are all underwater hope there's no gator in there the shade shack was definitely the easiest of all tied it off right there but the cement did harden before all that rain came in so all the posts are doing good all right trough is done this is still one of my favorite ideas because i know the bait are gonna love this spot right here all right folks out here on alcatraz island giving you an update so it seems to be one of the hot spots for all the wild game and animals we got deer that pile through down there every night some snake looking pattern there but if you guys remember last week i found a squirrel tail up here so i'm gonna point my night vision camera at this island we're gonna see all of that animal activity and try to figure out who's the hunter out here using alcatraz island as its stalking ground so the first thing we see is a big group of deer and that really doesn't surprise me because we have so many deer around this property but it is really good to see them using the pond as a watering hole but what i'm really interested to see is that coyote or bobcat or fox that's been attacking the squirrels around here because we've seen a lot of them so after watching hours of nighttime footage i finally found it and check it out they're on the island right now and you are not going to believe what it is it's a whodowl who would have ever thought that owls would be attacking the squirrels but that's who's using the island man that's crazy all right folks one of the first things we promised sarah is that once we got water in the pond she could go swimming in it so we're gonna let her get dirty and muddy and then we're gonna wash her off in the tub so are you gonna get in that pond you gonna swim in it so one of the projects for next week is we got to get power over there to alcatraz island and what i think you would typically do is run a power cable underground and pop up over there at the island but in our case we can't dig into our clay blanket so i was thinking about pvc well pvc may not mold with the contours as well so i'm thinking about going in with that flex conduit still running the marine grade cable through it but then maybe putting the flex conduit on the bottom and then covering it up with some of that pea gravel to keep it right there in place and the idea behind it is you could run marine cable just across there but i don't want somebody hooking it as they're out here fishing so i'd like to get it inside some type of conduit and i'm thinking that's going to be the best way to go but if you guys have any idea on how to get fishermen friendly power from this bank over to the island leave it in a comment down below but now let's take a look at some of the game camera footage it looks like we got a couple does here fighting over the soybeans and the bucks always seem to get along a lot better and we had a few young deer i think this was their first hurricane and they didn't have a clue what was going on [Music] and i apologize to the bobcat about blaming him for the squirrels and now it's time to feed the most aggressive fish on the planet mr moby [Music] all right folks that's going to wrap up this video make sure to hit that subscribe button because we have a lot of cool things coming up with this pond build but i hope you all enjoyed this video and we will see you all next time [Music] you

Channel: BamaBass

Views: 636,635

Rating: 4.9564004 out of 5

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Id: iQuiaWysdsI

Length: 15min 34sec (934 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 05 2021