Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Mister Worst Case Scenario-- visit needed

Make sure you have the right to fish/use the entire lake. I know of a small private lake where all the land owners properties extends to the creek channel and they are only allowed to fish on there property, without written permission. Wasn't always like that but some snotty neighbors got to complaining about people trespassing on their property, even tho they were in a boat fishing. Snotty neighbors wanted to fish all over the lake, but didn't want anyone to fish on their property. Wound up in court and court decided to limit all property owners to only the property they own. If you have written permission, you can fish on other property, just like hunting. Everyone on the lake gave written permission to all the other property owners, except the snotty one. Pizzed them off something bad. Last I knew, they were trying to sue all the other land owners for excluding them.

I moved and dont know what ever became of it, but I imagine the court threw it out.

FWIW, I lived about 1/4 mile from the lake and was not one of the landowners, but I did have written permission to fish the lake, from everyone except the snotty one.

Luckily this is is not a blue-line. It does not even hold water seasonally. It's currently just a drainage gully that empties into a blue-line stream about 100 yards after it leaves my property. My land touches blue-lines in several places, and yes! I'd play hell trying to do anything along them. As it is, I've been told by the neighbor that all we have to do is stay 40 feet back from the property line when we build the dam. Me? I'd go even further up the flowage before I started digging, but these are all issues to hash out later. For now, I want my neighbor to take me back over all the places he's contacted. I want the same people to tell me the same things before I let someone dig.

Didn't read it all but if I was you I would check with the Shore Line Protection Act and it's accompanying bills for navigable waterway. You might not want the headache.

When you called it a creek, I assumed you meant flowing water. It is probably a lot less restrictive to put a dam on a gully but it isn't going to make much of a fishing lake. Maybe a catfish pond. May turn into a mudhole in dry weather.



Jerry

Judging from what's happened with neighbors, these impoundments usually fill up in a year or so with run-off. It's taking the water from around 35 acres-- give-or-take. We'd be able to stock it after it one winter's precip filling it. Max depth as my neighbor planned it is 40+ feet at the dam. I think he's not being realistic-- the state might let 20-30 feet go. We'll adjust to fit reality.

Here's a lake we see on the way into Falmouth that's smaller, but has some of the same feel.






You can see from the aerial view the dam itself is pretty deep.

About a decade ago, or so,..*all* of Falmouth was a lake.

Cool thread! You need to calculate your watershed area and make sure you’re not too big or small. If done correctly you should be fine, an emergency spillway will save the dam should you get too much rain. I built one 5 years ago and have absolutely no regrets except not taking out more trees around it. Leaves are not good for a pond, especially oak!

Worst case scenarios: neighbor uses logged off hillside for body dump starting with yours, pond breeds new hybrid mosquito that gives you west Nile virus and Ebola, neighbor strikes oil on the hillside, moves to Hawaii, wife leaves you for the other guy because she misses the hillside, red area is already a body dump, you go to prison for murder, you and the neighbor become best friends but his wife laughs like a pterodactyl so for the rest of your life you eat 1 or 2 meals a week with a woman who laughs like a pterodactyl.

You win!

you'll have a lake close to the house. you will want to buy a boat. the first boat will not be big enough so you will buy a bigger fancier boat. this will cost you untold thousands and endless aggravation when it ultimately fails just out of warranty. you'll begin to resent the boat and the lake and the neighbor. pretty soon you'll blame him for all your problems and the bickering and fighting will begin. one thing leads to another and you shoot him dead and end up in jail. and then a muslim buys your property for pennies on the dollar and opens a mosque. so now you're in jail for life and the whole county hates you for being a murdering, muslin loving piece of schit.

I remember this well. We're about 10 miles away; my lowest elevation is in the 690's. The house is up above 800. The Licking River is 2 miles away and sitting in the 570's at its closest approach. At Falmouth the elevation is 540. The Licking could flood to a depth of 200 feet at Falmouth, and my toes would still be high and dry. Poor Falmouth. What you don't see is that there is a South Branch of the Licking that merges with the main branch at Falmouth. The south branch is emptying from way down past Cynthiana and the main branch empties out of Cave Run Lake, 5 counties east of here. All that water came down to that one little spot and had nowhere to go, because the Ohio River was flooding as well. Yikes!


Regarding boats: I already have 3. One is a nice little ski boat without a motor that 's sitting idle in my barn. I figure I'll just find a way to drag it down there and hook a trolling motor to the back.

Who owns the water rights?

That's a good question. To be completely honest, I don't know. However, around these parts of the world, water is not considered a problem as far as quantity, only quality. Folks are encouraged to build ponds to hold back water to discourage flash flooding. I know this is quite different elsewhere. I've got multiple ravines on my place as big or bigger than the one we're planning on damming. When there's a heavy rain, they make noticeable roar for a day or so; you know you just need to stay out of there. Ownership? I'm sure someone will tell us as soon as we start asking what to do.

Is the branch slate bottom? If so a “key hole” cut will need to be made across the slate to keep water from seeping underneath. I had an amazingly strong spring and was considering a nice pond when I lived in Adair. I fixed that urge by selling the property. :-)

This is in the Trans-Bluegrass, north of Lexington. It's all limestone and clay. The clay is so impermeable that we all have to have ponds instead of leach fields for our sewage. The problem lies in the limestone-- if there's a gap, it can leak badly. Most recently, two locals have tried ponds. One went perfect. The other failed to hold water in the test dig and the project was abandoned. The two ponds are less than 1/4 mile apart, and to the eyeball looked identical.

In that case, you should dig out the dam/ key way first to see if you can hold water at the dam. If you are building in a natural ravine you can always pack clay over any area that might show limestone. We hit sand when we were digging my dam. This was after all the trees and roots were removed. I ended up mining about 30 truckloads of sand and plugging the seam with clay. Added about 5k to the job. I believe if you go over 25’ high at the dam or 3/4 of an acre in surface area you will need permits and permission.
Here we are packing clay in the keyway under the dam.

Sounds like a nice project...

Be careful the "split $20k in construction/fees" etc. doesn't turn into $100k and you are in for half... unless you have already thought of that.

IMHO, be very clear $10k is written down as your max available contribution.

Things may go very well and y'all get everything done for under $20k... then again much is unknown and projects can creep badly.

I quite agree. I know he was spitballing the $20K figure. I'm willing to get into a little creepage, but I've also been reading Chapter 150 of the KY Revised Code this AM, along with all the other attendant stuff. Yikes! I don't know how we'll get a qualified engineer to perform all those tests AND get a dam built for $20K.

Move some Beavers in....(grin)