I'm planning on renovating my pond. Here's some details:

- 50 years old
- 0.65 acres
- 48 acres watershed
- 12 foot high dam
- dam about 1:1 slope in highest place
- dam has all kinds of trees up to 15"
- 4" overflow
- overworked earthen emergency spillway
- seems to be quite deep throughout with exception of inflow area

I want to get the dam overhauled with trees removed, a nice new near 3:1 slope, new primary spillway, and new emergency spillway (at opposite end from existing emergency spillway).

I have a excavation guy who also advertises expertise with ponds. I like him. He's signed on for the work above. Unfortunately, he's a bit busy right now, so it'll be a while before he starts.

I'm trying to get everything ready to make it easy for him to do the work above and possibly additional work.

So, I've lowered the pond about 4ft (as he specified). I could lower it more. My wife is scared to death I'll kill all the fish. What can I do to mitigate the chances here? Add aeration? Feed the fish? If it comes June/July/August and he hasn't started, should I raise it back to prevent the hot weather from killing them?

One of the reasons I lowered the pond was to do some reshaping and to get out some of the silt. My pond is surrounded by trees, rocks, hills, etc, so my goal was to expose the banks to have a place for equipment to run. My excavation guy says he can get through muck on his excavator with his mud mats to move the muck to the shore, but is he going to be able to drive any other equipment in this stuff in order to move the dirt to another place in the pond? How long will it need to dry out before moving banks and muck 100ft+ is possible?

My excavation guy also wasn't thrilled with the idea of stockpiling topsoil to put back on the dam when finished. He said he'll try it to some degree, but it'll be full of roots and hard to work with, and he suggested bringing in new topsoil if I really need it. I also suggested putting pond muck on the top layer of the dam, but he said it's also really tough to work with. Is he right about these things?

Any other suggestions? Thanks!