Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Help Help bring old pond back

I have an old pond thats still in the family, its about 50 years old or so. Level is down about 6 feet, infested with duckweed. When I fished there as a kid, the fish were huge. Now I don't think there are any in it. Trees are growing in the dam, assuming thats whats causing the drainage. I shoved a stick in the bottom and it was black muck when I brought it back up. I want to bring it back to life now that I'm back living here. Should it be drained, dredged, what? Thanks for any assistance.

dwlinc23:

Welcome to PB! Be prepared to answer lots of questions before you get a complete answer.

I'll start the ball rolling.

I'm assuming that since you have a dam, it's a pond that collects runoff vs. a dug groundwater filled pond.

How big are the trees on the dam?

What are your goals for the pond?

How big is the pond now, and how big will the pond be at full pool?

How big is the property? (can the dirt/mud be spread nearby or will it have to be trucked away?)

How difficult is it to get heavy equipment to the pond?

I'm sure the experts will start chiming in shortly.

Water is from rain runoff. The yard slopes from the house, about 200-300 feet. The trees have overgrown, they are about 3-4 inches in diameter. They weren't there last time I fished it, 25 years ago. My goal is to raise the water level back to original, 10-12 feet. Mud can be placed on the other side of the dam, a continued downslope. I stood in the pond, literally where the water level was, tall grass was around my feet.

It was a great fishing pond and I want to get it back to that.

If the trees are only 3"-4" in dia. then cut all of the ones on the dam down ASAP. But, if they are that size, then I have my doubts that they are causing the problem.

How big is/will be the pond?

From on top of the dam


pond will be approx 1/2 acre and 10-12 ft in depth

If it was mine, I'd be really tempted to:

1) do a soil test to make sure that the soil would hold water and see what type of soil was beneath the topsoil (hoping for clay).

If that was the case, then I'd:

1a) Make a plan for the pond renovation, including a fish stocking plan

2) break thru the dam and drain it, then after it dried up enough:

3) renovate the pond, getting it in the shape, depth and size that I wanted, and repair the dam, making sure that it had a good keyway or core, making sure that I had all my structure available for placement in the pond as soon as all the dirt pushing was finished.

4)Plant/seed soil erosion plants as soon as the dirt work was finished, even before placing structure, providing placing the structure wouldn't disturb the seeds/plants.

5) pray for enough rain to get the seeds and plants off to a great start, then pray for enough rain to fill the pond.

Well it looks a little ruff thats for sure. Do a water test. Depending on how much work you wanna do makes alot of what ya need to do ill give you the cheap way. First you gotta get the water where they can live in it with out draining the thing I would put air pump on it then get some grass carp let them clean it up for you. Then if you can get it cleared up you made need to apply lime or gypsum. Next to cut down growth of weeds start are fertilizing program to get the zoo/pytoplankton going, this will turn the water a green color and you want 18in-24in vis in the water. After this you should be able to do the rest of your stocking.

Grass carp don't eat duckweed, or watermeal which you may also have. Tilapia supposedly do, but for a pond that small it would be quicker and much more surefire to get some Whitecap which will definitely get rid of both DW and WM.

I would tend to agree with Esshup's recommendation of re-doing the dam and digging the pond out. You could expand it to make it larger than it's been previously as long as the watershed will support it.

I'd have to vote on a complete re-deo as the least expensive and all-round best outcome on this situation.

Ok fellas, If you look at the second pic on the post "from the top of the dam", if you look at the grass growing on the left portion of the pic, which is actually below where the water level should be. I will be cutting that as low as I can. So my question is, should I get as much of the root as possible too, or cut down as low as possible and put some grass killer on it, which kills the root?

So have you decided against a re-do, or is this just an interim solution until you make a final decision on how you want to proceed?

From a number of other posts on the forum, it sounds like the best advice if you want to use a weed killer is to be very selective in what type you use as it can/will run into the pond and create some problems in the water for fish and other desired vegetation. There have been a few particular brands with more specialized concentrations of the active chemical recommended by others here, but I'm not able to recall them offhand. I'm sure someone else will be able to do so.

Here's a link to the thread I was thinking of in my last post:

Weed/vegetation killers

This thread talks a lot about trees, but does get into general weed killing as well. Hope it's helpful.

Thanks for the quick replies. Todd3138, will more than likely do a re-do, this is just a thought for an interim solution til I decide for sure how to proceed.

A quick clean up of the area seems like an easy, cheap thing to do to buy a little time.  That's what I've done on our new farm and we've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of the ponds even though I haven't launched any big projects yet.  It's amazing what a change clearning weeds/brush makes.

Good luck with the overall project.

If you're going to do a redo then you might as well let the dirt work guys, who ought to have a dozer and/or a track hoe, clean it up for you at the same time they start doing the pond work. They can make QUICK work of any vegetation around that pond. I watched a track hoe guy yank 100+ year old oaks out of the ground lickety split and a dozer guy push an impenetrable thicket out of the way in about 5 minutes.