Well, here in Texas, with practically the entire state under a burn ban, it is kind of hard to find a silver lining to our drought. However, being able to widen and deepen a pond may qualify. Attached are some before, during, and after pics of work just completed on our 3/4 a. pond 40 miles west of Texarkana. The pond had been quite shallow, even to the point that four wheelers (prior to my purchase) had really rutted up that end, causing two pools during low water. I hired a track hoe and a dozer for 8 hours each, really widened and lengthened that end of the pond, while making a nice 5-7 foot deep pool when water rises. Also some nice shelves on the edges for plants. After excavation was finished, I scattered some forage seed (it was what I had) and a bag of 13-13-13 to get some ground cover started.

Nice, Wildcat - that's definitely a silver lining and the right attitude in preparing for recovery when the rains eventually return!

Are you leaving that wall in place, or will you breach that at some point? If you leave it, it's going to create a really cool structure there that may hold some good fish when the pond is full.

Congrats on completing the work!

Todd, I am torn between having it at least cut down in a couple of places vs. just letting it naturally slide down once the new end fills up. My concern is that, if we get another bad drought, I could end up with two ponds (assuming that the low water dam remains as high as it is originally).

Thoughts?

The bottom is going to have an interesting feature either way, as the depth to the north of the new area is definitely a shallow, gentle slope down to pond bottom...then it drops off 90 deg into 5-6 feet. Also, in the new end, the track hoe guy dug a 4-5' hole to drain the standing water into, so definite catfish hole!

Well, I had two holes dug (one on each end of the dam) two years ago to make the dam bigger and back up more water. I'm in NE Oklahoma and it got low enough this summer to isolate the two holes from the rest of the pond. It would be a possibility for yours to do that if it ever gets that low again.

I went ahead and drained the rest of my pond down and had the entire thing cleaned out.

Either way, you have a better pond. Nice job!

Yeah, your experience is what I am afraid of. Think I'll have the hoe guy back out once the water gets up about even or a bit more to knock a big chunk out of the dam without removing all of the bottom features, just dig a nice trench out of the middle that will let water flow freely from one end to the other. I can always find a few hours of heavy equipment chores on our land to give him reason enough to unload the track hoe again!

OK, about 5 months later, the pond has risen approximately 2 feet, the levy between the newly-cleaned out south end and the main body of the pond is not visible at all. I met with the track hoe guy last weeeknd, he is going to reach out from each side of the pond and open up the levy so I don't ever end up with two ponds. I've asked him to leave the center portion for bottom structure.