As many of you know, in December of 2015, the stand pipe Sulphur Bluff Deer trail rusted out after more than 40 years. The Lake was built in the 70's and like many of the lakes built in that era the stand pipe (the pipe where where water goes when the lake is high) was built with a corrugated steel that has a life expectancy of 30 to 50 years. They almost always rust out at the 90 degree elbow.

The owner called me and said she had lost her lake. I said "lost your lake?" She said "yes, lost my lake." The next day I met a lake builder friend of mine at the lake and we helped develop a plan. Here was the plan.

1) Cut a portion of the dam to let the little bit of water remaining drain

2) Apply a product called Rotone and apply in the pockets of water left in low spots to kill all remaining fish life. We wanted to start with a clean slate

3) Rebuild the dam adding 3 plastic siphon pipes that will engage when the water hits a certain level. Siphon pipes allows the lake to pull the bad (unoxygenated) water from the bottom of the lake when the lake reaches a certain high level. This is how virtually all GOOD fishing lakes are built today.

4) Re-worked some of the sides to make them deeper to reduce aquatic vegetation.

5) Added dozens of large brush piles. These are primarily on the west side of the lake, in the middle and along the dam. To put things in perspective, most private lakes built in the 70's spent thousand of dollars to bulldoze trees because the lake builder was use to building cattle ponds and thought the whole lake should be smooth like a toilet bowl. After all that is what cows want. Cows don't want to be tripping over ledges, stumps, and brush piles. That is the opposite of what fishing lake builders do today. Today, you want the lake to look like a bomb went off. You want it to look "ugly". Fish, especially bait fish need lots of places to hide, loaf, feel safe, and most all procreate to feed our starving bass.

6) We are now waiting for the lake to fill and plan to re-stock with the latest stocking strategies as soon as the lake is at least 50% full.

If all goes right we will be fishing Spring of 2020!

Look at all those beautiful Brush Piles. Notice the old rusted out stand pipe, now used for cover in the middle of the lake?

Yes, even old Cars make good habitat. This was an old Cadillac.

This puts the size of the brush piles into perspective.

Posted By: Steve Alexander