Just finished reading "Perfect Pond" and "Just Add Water." Any thoughts on my South Louisiana pond renovation plan (see attachments) from a vegetation and habitat standpoint? Should I designate a 4-5ft sand-gravel shelf for BG spawning somewhere? Should I consider expanding one of the shallow (1ft) shelves for attracting waterfowl?

The existing pond is the red dashed outline and is about 0.9acre. The current redesign is about 0.5acre though I'd like to increase that if I can find someone to take some dirt and reduce my cost. The main reason I want to increase it is to increase my average and maximum depth (limited currently by narrow width) and to give more acre feet of water for fishing, paddling, and swimming!

Let me know your thoughts!

Anything, folks? I'm trying to get this finalized so I can start moving dirt by the end of the month while it's still dry around here!

Hi Kris, I know it's frustrating when you can't get an answer but to be honest, I don't understand your post?

Maybe it's my viewer but I don't see a "red dashed line" on your attachment? The attachment has me befuddled as to what is going on? It looks like you are flooding a perfectly good house?

Also, you want to go from 0.9 acre and ADD 0.5 acre for a total of 1.4 acres? I apologize but I have no idea what is going on?

Don't worry about attracting waterfowl. Where you are, that's likely anyway. I'd make a spawning bed/shelf adjacent to your fire pit area. That's a great place to sight fish when sunfish are nesting. Make it about the size of a pickup truck, about three feet deep.

Lots of other suggestions in the two books you read.

Thanks a lot for the input! I'll be passing that suggestion along and will send updates when available!

Looking forward to your progress. I imagine part of the lack of response was you had such very good plans already. Very nice design setup.

It's 0.9 acre now, per the faint dashed line you can see inside of the property line and outside of the blue pond redesign (the redesign is smaller, 0.5 acre or so). Not sure where you see a flooded house. Sorry if the image isn't clear, I had to resize the attachment for it to fit and it's not as clear as the 2x3ft printed layout I have at home.

What you got going on so far looks beautiful. The more spawning area and cover the better you are I think. Looking forward to some pictures from the ground.