Hey, I am thinking about building a pond this summer for irrigation, and I was wondering if I could raise fish in it as well. The water would come in primarily during floods and heavy rains from surrounding crop ground and pasture. Filled the pond would probably be about 20 ft. deep, and the water level shouldn't ever go down more than 3 or 4 inches in a day during irrigation time. There is a tile that goes through there right now and runs all year round. Would that work? How low could I pump it? Could I stock the same rates of fish as I would if I weren't pumping out water? Thanks.

We originally used our first pond for irrigation and would pull it down a couple feet during the growing season (drip irrigation on vegetables under plasticulture). The question is how far you pull it down and what gets in the pond from the runoff from cropland. We had no problem with a BG/LMB/CC combination in our pond. The CC never spawned and died out which has been fine with us. Fish did just fine. You may want to add FHM and see how things go with water level the first year. You'll want the FHM to build up as forage before adding the rest of the fish anyway.