If the pond is mainly for forage production, you may want to keep as many rooted and filamentous algae plants out as possible. Plants will make harvesting fish much more difficult. Without predators you need little if any cover yet still getting high production numbers. Amount of proper food is often the main limiting factor in production of forage fish.
I completely agree with no plant life in a forage production pond! As John Monroe said, if you want lots of minnows and habitat for them, his line of vision works....but would make any harvesting of the minnows for putting into other bodies of water, all but impossible to do.
