I apologize for the repetitive information here from my other thread.
A little background:
I live in Southern New England and have an approximately 1/4 acre pond (100' approximate circumference). We have owned the property for 4 years. As far as we can tell the deepest point is 6' right now, so probably 7' when the water is higher. The majority of pond is that depth as the shallow areas reach 6' within 10' of shore. The pond is man made and was put in in the '70's to irrigate the garden. It is not lined. It is spring fed from the bottom and has an outflow (though the spring doesn't feed it so much that it is always outflowing, only when we get lots of rain). It has a stone bottom (not that I can see it) and the man who installed it used to swim in it and said it was 9' deep. The trees have certainly grown in around it as I have pictures from the 90's.
The owner before us, who bought the place in the 90's, added goldfish. They are 8"+ man-eaters. Well, not really, but they certainly do breed like rabbits. The pond has a lot of fish and minnows. They appear to all be goldfish. There are also tons of frogs, newts, turtles, dragonflies and other water bugs- and leeches. The edge is planted with water iris and there are some shallow water grasses and perhaps 10 cattails. We have done nothing to the pond since we bought the place with the exception of cutting overhanging branches the first Winter. The water is sometimes clear and sometimes murky. It has no noticeable odor and no algae.
My Goal:
I would like to make the pond more swimmable. The two obstacles as I see them are muck (probably the goldfish are big contributors) and leeches.
LMB have been suggested to eat the leeches and minnows. I am not sure how I feel about this as the LMB also eat frogs and are hard to sex, which means I could end up with too many of them.
Any suggestions?
