Clay Pond Build for bass

all right so in this area we are going to build like a 70 by 100 earthen pond it's not going to be perfectly oval we're going to scallop it out there's going to be room for a small dock a little building over here on the far side now one of the things people don't understand is they automatically think that their their ground will hold water sometimes you have a high water table you just don't know so one of the most important things is is to do a test hole and see what the soil makeup is and yes we charge to do test holes because it does take time and you got to bring the equipment and everything else but it's money well spent because i can't tell you how many times we get phone calls and people say oh i dug my hole already but this thing will not hold water well it's most important to check the soil makeup and see exactly what you're dealing with now say your ground is porous you could do some bentonite and you could do some clay and there's a whole sandwich method and we'll go over that later on but this is where we're going to start with this we're going to do a test hole right now so see what's interesting about this soil you see that blue in there that is a clay compound it it does clump up pretty good there's different strains of soil in this but that right there i'm hoping that you can see that but that little bit of see that clay we're going to do is smear that on the sides so it looks like there's enough of a clay compound in this pond or in this area to build this pond you can already see there's water coming in it could be surface water but when you slick those sides you see how that all gets i'm just kind of curious if there's a high water table here so what we're going to do is we're going to leave this hole here and let it perk up and we'll see exactly how much water we actually have in this hole in a day or two all right so today we are back down in selkirk new york last year we built a koi pond here and they decided that they wanted a earthen pond so we're going to build something around 70 by 100 maybe a little bit bigger it's going to be scalloped when we showed up here of course because of the spring thaw all the snow this whole area was just saturated so bob is over here right now he's got the pump running and yesterday he said he could have a canoe down here to get into the center part but right now he's got it all pumped down we know we're going to run in the water because there's a high water table so it's going to be a lot of fun but it is going to get muddy quick [Music] well day three is not disappointed at all of course it rained all night and we have got a colossal mess here seems like i don't know it's gotta get worse before it gets better and we're just gonna keep motoring through but you gotta check out [Music] [Music] so this is the path we have to take that loader all the way down and back to get that soil there there's no way you're getting a truck back in there that's why we used a loader got the loader down there nick is with us today and he's actually using the small excavator to load the bucket of the loader but check out this slop it's beautiful nice but we're making progress with the pond it's getting bigger every minute of course because we're digging with this beauty but check that machine out i think it's going to need a little pressure washing but the pond's coming along great i mean we got all this down through here is all there we already got water coming in which is always a plus right we want to have as much water in as possible and it's definitely coming out right there we hit this old clay drain it's like an old farm drain and uh back when they used to make them out of clay and uh they were usually in like 12 or uh 16 inch sections maybe sometimes two feet and they put them together and just put a little stone around there and that is a bonus for an earthen pond because that water is constantly flowing in there as well as seeping right in as we're digging so yeah we have a mountain of soil to move so one of our new employees who's only been here a week is wes and wes comes from a construction background we've been dealing with this mud bucking mire and we couldn't even move with the equipment we had so i spent a whole day looking for a track truck it's actually a dump truck with tracks and the funny part is is wes knows just how to run him because he's been in the construction industry and he's got it figured out because we are motoring i bet you they must have moved probably 400 yards this morning in in no time at all but check out this dump truck this thing's a beast but when you're digging an earthen pond and you run into mud we can't stop we have a schedule to keep and this is solving all our issues right now moving that soil [Music] [Applause] so today we're getting the piers in for the deck dock whatever you might want to call it because right up in here there's going to be this small dutch building that's going to be kind of overlooking the pond so right now before we fill up any further with water we're gonna get these guys in so we can cantilever that deck right back up and over the water when it eventually fills all the way up into this area all right so this morning we are here we're getting ready to build this pier or deck whatever you might want to call it it's going to be attached to a small building that the boat the owner is going to purchase so we got to get this in first we got our piers in they're good and dry nice and solid we went down really deep into the bank um into the shelf of the pond so that way it's going to make it stable we're going to eventually flank some rocks around it too to just give it some character so tomorrow we're going to start hauling boulders in here too to start making that fish habitat we got a log over here that i will show you that we're going to actually sink in the bottom because that way the fish kind of has some shade we're going to do some gradations of gravel so they got some spawning areas but first and foremost we have to get this deck on [Music] [Applause] [Music] so all the framing's done we're at the stage we're starting to put the decking on here getting this all screwed down so then after we're done with this i mean look at a cantilever on this they'll be able to jump right in that pond in the back over here is going to be a building that they purchase that's prefab to be able to set right in there and it'll set the stage for this whole big pond check that out all right we have this big log or a tree i should say because it's pretty long that we cut down and we're gonna put in the bottom of this pond for fish habitat we got a ton of boulders here it's about 35 ton actually we've got some really good-sized guys right now i'm getting ready to put some in the bottom over there by the dock here whatever you might want to call it and we are walking this whole shell for the pond down below i had to make a ramp in there which we'll fix on a way out but it's the only way to get in there because it's been so wet that we really don't want to track over what we already fixed so this is what we got to do all right so here we are we're down here we just got a ton of rain yesterday and i wanted to come down and see how far up our earth and pond project came and it's almost all the way up to that shelf that's down in there which is pretty cool because now we only got like probably two and a half more feet of water but this is what it looks like after we're done it was a total mess i don't know if you remember that or not but now we got everything raked out we got straw blanket down and this whole thing is just now waiting for water to fill this up which i think if we get one or two more rainstorms it's gonna fill and we'll have to keep track of this and come back and show you once all the grass has grown in and what this looks like [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Decker's Pondscapes

Views: 66,471

Rating: 4.8963284 out of 5

Keywords: Decker's Pondscapes, ponds, water features, Clay earthen ponds, Farm Ponds, Recreation Ponds, aquascape, backyard koi pond, blakes exotic animal ranch, brian barczyk, can you swim with koi, garden pond, greg wittstock, how to build a pond, natural swimming pond, natural swimming pool, natural swimming pool construction, natural swimming pool with fish, paul cuffaro, raww fishing, swim pond, swimming pond, the pond guy, bass fishing, fishing pond, bass pond construction

Id: Gk0sgS5t2_0

Length: 9min 57sec (597 seconds)

Published: Sat May 08 2021