Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Damming a Stream with Concrete Blocks and Concrete in Bags

I would also offer that you know the source of where your stocked fish come from.
We have a small spring fed pond, the spring is completely underground until entry into the pond, no creek feed etc.

Some 'friends' offered some Koi and we allowed them to put them in, we now have hydrilla living in it in it with no way to eradicate.

This question might be where he was going. Is it legal to do it THERE? Even if a wetlands determination hasn't been made, that could still be considered wetlands. https://www.fws.gov/wetlands/data/mapper.html

Check with the Corp of Engineers, they know about dams and such. You DID get permission before doing that, right? Damming any kind of waterway might even bring in the EPA, too.

You might have bitten off more than you wanna chew. Around here, they'll flat-out skin you alive for such things.

Actually, it will end up about 1/900th of 50 acre-feet of water when I'm done if my calculations are correct.

I like your plan and you have a beautiful place there. The only thing I would skip would be the walleye. I doubt they would reproduce in a body of water that size, unless put and take is your goal. I would not attempt to segregate fish populations in the two separate ponds either. Whatever species you have in the higher pond will also end up in the lower pond sooner or later. Best of luck with your project. Just spending that much quality time with your kids alone is worth the trouble.

Thanks for the advice and kind words TBB. There are deer out back there too! Youth-only season is in less than two weeks.

How many acres above the dam feeds the stream? Spring fed?

It appears to be fed by a farm pond about 2,000-ft upstream, that and rainfall.

The downstream flow hasn't been affected by the current dam and can't and won't by the proposed one. It isn't big enough for evap to be a significant factor, and the water has to go through or over--nothing else is possible.

Beautiful place. Love that moose and the basement.
For your pond, just bring in a pair of beavers. 🦫 😊

My advice is to get a guy in with a bulldozer that knows what he's doing and make an earthen dam. It will be safer and you'll get more of what you're looking for with less headache.

My Dad and I did a project kind of like this when I was a young teen, albeit a bit smaller. He wanted to show me various construction techniques, and we picked a little creek that was running behind the house. The teaching went well. It was a great father/son weekend diversion. The creek was dry. It drizzled a bit early in the week, and filled everything nicely. Then we had a two-day toad-strangler, and I went down after the rain let up to see what had happened.

I got there just as the thing was letting go. I got up on the dam and tried to throw mud into a small breech, but it failed and sent a wall of water down the hill, washed out into some back yards, and then finally drained into a culvert over on the next street. People were rushing out of their houses to see where the water was coming from. I had sense to duck and run back to the house.

I thought the dam was going to be permanent. Dad explained it was just a teaching exercise and not to get my panties in a wad. Even he was surprised the dam had let go so fast. We waited for a phone call. It never came. By the next day, you could not see what we had done.

Shaman, I'm looking at it the same way, basically. If the concrete dam doesn't work, it will just be an experiment. Since I created that road, I then could hire someone with a front-end loader to drive down and build a large earthen dam over and around the exiting timber and earth dam.

This dam is about 70 feet vertically below any house or yard, including mine. So, it can't get up to someone's yard or house.

Water is a powerful force. Almost any dam you could build there, especially anything you can build by hand will succumb to hydraulic pressure.

Earth dams need good engineering. Even then they sometimes fail.

What is downstream?

Hawk, love the new place & your significant other !

WINNING !!

The Potomac River is about 1.2 miles downstream.

It used to be that intermittent stream were of no concern to the Corp but that changed under Obama and un changed under Trump. I do not know if it has changed back under our phony president Biden. If the State doesn't care and the rules have not changed then I say go for it. Have all the fun you want with it. Playing in a creek is great fun and building little dams are just as fun.

kwg

Wasn’t there an episode of Gunsmoke or Bonanza about Big Daddy damming up the stream? 😃


Good trivia for the old couch cünts

I probably would have used breaker rock and local materials, clay , mud etc with a mini excavator or what have you. The concrete blocks will work until they don't and the water eats away the bank on the sides of the concrete. Cool place, Dude! You have some good years left to enjoy it also.

This is pretty true unless it pretty shallow and even then in a 10-20 year storm event will wash it out.