I went with Bluegill and bass only in mine - had a previous pond with catfish and they are fun to catch but would hog all the fish food meant for the Bluegill plus they would eat the Bluegill. That is a good looking pond being built!

Just FYI there is a great website, www.pondboss.com, that has a great forum just for ponds, fish, etc. Some really high end folks on there who know their stuff and are willing to share and answer questions about this stuff.

Awesome pics !

Digging is easy, moving the dirt is where all the work is. When I dug my pond, I did most of the work with a Case 1550 dozer. But then I wanted to move more dirt and it was just too far to do it with the dozer, so I used my NH 555E backhoe with a one yard bucket. That was also painfully slow. Then I bought a used, non street legal Ford F600 dump truck. It can haul 5 yards at a time and that really sped things up. It was still painfully slow to load the dump truck, get off the backhoe and into the dump truck, then haul it to where I wanted to dump it, and then drive back, park it, and then load it again, but I was able to see progress and eventually I got it done. I don't think that I would ever want to do it again, but looking back, it was all worth it.

That’s beautiful Eddie

That sunrise/sunset? pic is fabulous.

Frame the bottom two and hang Them on your wall.

X2

looks like a painting!

That is a heck of a set up there sir. Congrats on that.

How big is that Eddie?

X2. I live in Longview, wish you would have asked for help. A few fishing trips would have been pay enough for this old retired guy.
Enjoy the heck out of that great looking place.

when I looked into expanding my pond I had several guys tell the me the same thing - said digging is easy but moving and getting rid of all the dirt is a pain - beautiful pics!

Originally, I guessed that I was at 4 acres, but then we had the summer of 2010 when we went one hundred days with temps over 100 degrees every day. I lost 8 feet of water by the time it rained again and started to fill back up. I don't know how many fish I lost, I was still 4 feet deep in the deep end, plus that big hole I dug in the bottom of the deep end, which I think helped a lot.

When full, I had about 3 feet of my dam exposed, which I thought was more then enough to raise the water level another two feet. I poured a concrete dam across my spillway that raised the water level another 2 feet. Once it was full and Google Maps showed it at it's new level, I went to https://findlotsize.com/ and measured around the edge of the water. It came out as 4.56 acres.

Thank you to everyone for the compliments. It's the biggest thing I've ever built, and something that I'm very proud of. My biggest mistake was in not building any docks or piers around it for fishing. That is my next project, but every year it seems to get pushed back to the next year.

I built he gazebo to marry my wife. She said that's what she wanted, so I made it happen. It took me 6 months, and the final month was pure panic to make sure I was done in time. For me, it's what makes hanging out there so much fun.

I just looked at the wedding picture and it's not even my wedding!!! LOL We've had several wedding there and I get confused when looking at my pictures.

What a gorgeous setting for an outdoor wedding tho!!

Can't wait to see these 3 done and Love the other ponds on here. Looks like heaven

sure is purty