Building a pond

[zummy]

Anybody done it or had it done? Words of advice or wisdom. Waterfowl hunting is my main goal with a secondary of fishing.

[DuckHuntingUSA]

Most important thing I made for my house pond was a stilling basin. If you have a ditch or dry creek that will be flowing into it, create a pool area with chunk rock between the incoming water and the pond to allow some silt to drop out during heavy flow. Pond at my place built about 25 years ago. Small stilling area and the mouth was about 2 feet deep, now almost level with the tip of the rock but pond bottom only has 3 to 6 inches of silt over the clay bottom. Keeps it from getting silted in. Also pay attention to drainage. If we get one of those 100 year storms we get every so often and incomming overcomes drain or spillway have secondary spillway, planned release area, to keep dam erosion down if damn is overflown.

[zummy]

I just want someone to give me a hard number to build. One contractor told me between 3 and 12k. That's a pretty big span.