Getting into a lease this year that hasn't had the ditches maintained for no telling how long, my buddy that is getting in also has a MM but it may not be enough to clean them out. Does anyone have any recommendations or knowledge of someone renting equipment to handle this as a Trenasse Digger? If not, does anyone know who does have this to provide a service and pay them to come clean out the ditches?

Location?

You may not want to make your marshes tidal. My lease went tidal because a new land overseer made us puul up iur dams. Duck hunting now sucks because of this.

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To answer your question...maybe Eddie Vice or his son Robbie are still cleaning/cutting ditches? Eddie used to live in Patterson and I think Robbie moved to Houma, last I heard. They are distant cousins.

There's some companies in swla that do that kind of work also , otherwise you could always invite several mmt members and let them have fun haha

You're shooting yourself in the foot if you clean them. Get an airboat or walk.

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viewtopic.php?t=57933

See if this thread pulls up , It's an older one I subscribed too

Wish I had a satellite image of our lease even 10-15 years ago much less 40 years ago...HUGE difference.


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Here ya go....wish Google Earth went back further than 1989. When I first started going out there with my dad in the early 70's, the ponds were very isolated with the ditches connecting them. Each pond/blind had it's own name. Amazing how much it's changed. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew took out the original duck camp that my dad built back in the 60's. My brothers and I and a couple friends built the current camp a few years later. You can see where the old camp was....that is now part of the canal.

https://youtu.be/fsNSIL6WO6c

Cool video Troy, really puts it in perspective.

Salt water can be the devil..

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We are pretty much fresh water....there has been the occasional redfish and I recall a flounder being caught one time out there. Some of the stills show lily floats that may look like marsh...but, it's pretty much all open water these days.....just means more lilies to deal with every year.


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If your water way is connected by a river or stream to the GOM it is tidal. You may not notice it but the water moves.

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Dats why i got me an airplane boat

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We can't have airplane boats on our lease....although, the overseer can ride wherever he wants in one.....perks, I guess.

Where are you located?

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I was just about to chime in. You'll see in that link we fought this for a long time. When we finally got access through the ditch, tidal movement would allow lilies and other veg to enter. Preston (bayou boy) came through with some floating boom. We stretched it across and made a floating gate. The gate was PVC pipe and acted like a check valve. The tide would flow into the lease, the pipe would prevent it. When the tide went out, the pipe would float open and allow anything in the lease to flow out. The pipe also was free to float up and down with the tidal movement. Pretty slick operation to watch. So that allowed us to kill any vegetation within the lease and not allow anything new to enter. But, after all that, the f'n ducks still never came down till late season. haha

No pics but made a drawing of it. The key to the whole thing is the 4" pvc pip needs to be longer than the stop. As long as that is ok, your good.

floating boom.jpg

We had something like that where I grew up. It works pretty well.

How did yall stop the lillys from snapping the pilings?.
We've used small telephone poles and they didn't stand a chance with all the lillys.


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never had an issue. Have had 2" pipe there for about 5 years now. If the tide isn't moving that much, they will tend to pile up very little, but there not getting into the lease. Once the tide starts flowing again, its gone.

We rope between all of our posts...and then to willow trees on the banks. We have probably some 600 feet of boom up on our lease....just going across the marsh from 16' post to 16' post...and a few very large anchors.


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Got to have the right connections to scoop up on used oil booms.


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I just checked on Google Maps how big of a span we crossed...basically 3200 feet. Not all of it is boom...only about 1200'. We have rope spread out across a couple of floats and we put boom between the floats. 16' long posts and anchor posts strategically placed linking the whole span together.

#work


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Not much to scale it by in the photo...but, the end of that tree line in the distance is one anchor point.


Standing on the 16' 4x4 posts that we drove....and some 20" XXH wall pipe sections we used as some anchors.

This was my ditches. I hunt bayou black, and have to deal with the land manager constantly on my ass about my boat.. Had a stage 2 motor for a good while, now run a 25 gtr on the lease and the dual gtr to get out there, dug these over grown ditches out in a couple hours just chewing it up..

And another.. Sorry

Weed eater to cut your way through?

We had it in the boat from cutting the grass by the camp, and we actually did try that, worked but was very very slow lmao