re: Advice on pond building for fish?

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catfish with bass and bream in a 1ac pond isn’t recommended.

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Amen. The cats completely took over my dads pond, now there are 50 10lb cats and a few bream half the size of my palm.

He wont let me take them out because he enjoys feeding them dog food.

Just curious, but why do you say not to stock the hybrid/half & half bream and bass?

I'm no help on the fish side of things but as far as the actual pond and dam construction here are a few things that the geotech in me recommends.

Call a reputable licensed geotech firm and talk through what you want for the pond. This call is free.

Let him tell you what you need for your area. Let him come do some drilling, lab work, and make recommendations on how to build your dam correctly so it doesn't leak. This should cost around $5k.

I can't tell you how often I get a phone call from someone saying their pond won't hold water. I go do an investigation and have to tell the guy he has to completely redo his dam as I cash his $5k check.

Key areas to look at while in construction.

Your dam should have a clay core. No sand, no gravel, no chert, no organics.

This clay should be highly plastic. Plastic Clay's hold more water and swell in the presence of water. You want to a PI north of 40.

If you elect to have an overflow pipe installed, make sure the clay surrounding the pipe is well compacted. This is the cause of probably 80% of dam leakage.

If your contractor can't ensure the clay around the overflow pipe is properly compacted then look into putting concrete collars around the pipe in the dam. It is easier to compact around these collars plus it makes the water travel a further distance to seep out of your lake.

Make sure the ground where the dam is going has been fully stripped of any and all vegetation, granular soils, and alluvial.


I type all of that kind of frustrated right now because I'm currently dealing with an owner that is pissy his lake won't hold water and the fix is going to cost him close to $100k.

frick a catfish.

You got that right. Them SOBs are in my pond. I haven't did anything with my pond in two years. Got coontail grass out the arse and now have something like duckweed growing.

After this rain this week, I will start spraying. Time to take it back from the wild even though I will be digging more from it this summer.

Advice? Size and if you can get wind wave action is a big plus along with make up water in the summer months is a big must.

I removed the balls of catfish as I spotted them against the banks. They learned to go deep when they saw me coming and I'd barley manage to get them. Frickers. I just felt like I wasn't getting enough of them to cure the problem. We also treated water with copper sulfate. We found some dead fry and a few smaller cats. The species was bullhead and a few blue cats? Hopefully my year old stocked fish will eat better this year.

How would blues or ops work in bigger ponds? Say at least 5 acres and at least 12-15 foot deep, or is that still way too small?

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How would blues or ops work in bigger ponds? Say at least 5 acres and at least 12-15 foot deep, or is that still way too small?

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IMO that’s still small enough for them to take over. Apples to oranges, but the crappie have had no trouble taking over and stunting in one of our ponds that’s over 7ac. It may take longer, but whoever breeds the fastest and eats the most is gonna eventually take over until you get into small lake size unless you want population control to be your full time job.

I haven't tried the noodles. Can you tell me the benefit between doing that vs a trotline?

Thanks for the reply. We stocked our Ms pond (about 3.5 ac) with 4 different bream species. I think they are copper-nose, green sunfish, red ear and Georgia Giants? Also stocked with the F1 bass. We went heavy on the bream, stocked for 4 ac, and light on the bass, for 3 ac. This was all done on the advice of the guy who sold us the fish, a retired Ms fish biologist who now owns a fish farm.