Hello all, I have just purchased an 11 acre property in Northwest Missouri with a .6 acre pond. I am moving to the country after living in town all my life and need some ideas on what I should do as far as pond management.

The pond is spring fed, roughly .6 acres according to Google Earth's measurements, and is completely covered in green and overgrown to the point where there is only about a 6 foot space where one can actually walk down to the water. I don't have any idea on depth yet, but will get out on the water with my 10' boat soon and take some measurements. I plan on clearing out at least 2 sides of the pond and reseeding with grass so I will have better access.

I am looking for advice on how to clear out the moss covering the entire surface and what types of fish would be suitable for a pond this size. I would also like to have some big bullfrogs to gig in the future. My new neighbor is my former boss and a good friend, and he has two ponds full of crappie and largemouth that he lets me fish all I want, so I would prefer to stock something else in mine. His 3+ acre pond is so full of monster crappie that I usually throw back anything under 12". Also, his bass in both ponds and the crappie in his smaller pond are infested with the yellow worms, is there anything I can do to prevent my future fish from getting parasites?

I have attached a Google Earth photo showing my property line outlined in red, with my neighbor's two ponds visible.

Welcome to the forum.

Add redear sunfish (RES)to the pond when you stock it. The grubs in the fish are likely part of the snail life cycle and RES love to eat snails so breaks up that cycle. Your friend might consider adding some but in an established pond with lots of predators he would need to stock advanced sizes because fingerlings would just get almost immediately eaten. You would be on or above the northern edge where RES can withstand the winters, but we have a number of members in Nebraska that keep them so I think you would be ok. The other snail eating fish that would be an alternative is pumpkinseed (PS) but they do not get as big as RES and are not as efficient at reducing snail numbers.

Take some pictures of what you are calling moss. It likely is filamentous algae (FA). Here is a thread on FA and there are others if you do a search for it. There are a bunch of pictures in this thread, see if what you have looks like it.
Filamentous algae thread

Also if you take some pictures, regular and close up, the experts can help identify it for sure. FA is a pain in the rear for a lot of people. It happens in ponds with high nutrient loads.

I see it is your first post so if you have not already found it, you will need this page. Commonly used acronyms Take note of the suggestion at the top of that page.

Welcome to Pond Boss!

Are you going to get heavy equipment in there to help you build? If so, you might consider a total re-do on the pond while you're at it. A clean slate on 0.6 ac while you have the machinery on site will save you many headaches down the road.

Also give Shawn Banks at http://midwestlake.com/ a call and he can help you work out a stocking & management plan. He's in Polo, MO.

Thank you guys for the advice.

I will try to make it up there sometime this week to get some pictures of the algae.

There will be some heavy equipment there for a while. What should be re-done? How much trouble would it be to make the whole pond a little larger?

None of these work quickly, cost-effectively, or well on ponds with decades of muck. Mechanical removal is the way to go for renovation.