1 yr old construction on 2 acre pond roughly 25ft deep. Have what appears to be a localized leak that has turned from one hose pipe capacity to about 3 and losing a foot/week as we speak. Has about 18ft left. Leak is coming from ankle of dam about 20ft form the end. This is heartbreaking b\c it was so beautiful this first yr of being full pool. I am pumping the creek into the pond at about 35gpm but the pump keeps getting clogged from the runoff of mud from the leak into the creek. I am now playing the waiting game and letting mother nature take over with the drainage and just monitoring. This is in my backyard off my deck so I don't want a permanent mudhole but have already put about 100k into this thing and it broke me. Not really sure what my options are until the water gets low enough to hopefully find the leak and repair it. The god news is it will fill back pretty quickly (if repaired) with the amount of watershed I have here in Mid TN. Depressing......

have musk rats??

I didnt see anything thing in your posts about the builder, I could have missed it. beautiful lake!! eastern TN?? when the water stops dropping that rapidly you know the level of the leak.

visible hole on the back side of the dam??

how much water is coming in on a daily basis??

In Nashville. No muskrats. Builder just an excavator said he built a good keyway. Pumping 35GPM from creek. Visible hold on backside YES!!!

Pump running now or not?

Pump continues to get clogged with the silt running down the dam secondary to the leak. This think is killing me. At this point gonna just let it run down and try to mark the levels and cross my fingers we locate this bastard and can repair it before it goes dry.

Good plan. Hopefully fixing the key in the ankle of your pond does the trick.

The silt is coming from your dam?

The silt is erosion of your dam?