Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? Using a winch to drag bottom of small pond

I have a small pond roughly a 1/4 acre. I have been using the lake rake and razor to clean up around the banks. A lot a lot of cattail growth.

I know there has to be an easy way to pull some of the material up with less work and without bringing in a large piece of a equipment.

My thought was to attach something heavy that drops to the bottom of the lake and will dig up the earth while dragging it across the bottom to up root these cattails. The pond is only 3-4' at the deepest points.

I was thinking I could extend the line across the other side of the lack and retrieve it using a winch. Due to the layout and location of the pond I won't be able to pull it by driving.

Thoughts?

Thanks,

P

I built a contraption this spring for the exact same reason your describing. I made a basket using the metal frame of an IBC tote and welded on a leading edge to scrape the bottom of the pond. Then I added 1/4" galvanized screen to the entire basket. We ran a line across the pond to allow us to pull the basket out. I used a winch on the tractor to pull a lot of gunk out. It worked pretty well. The main problem is that once you get the basket to shore it is very heavy. I ended up dumping the contents at the water line and manually loading it into a wagon (not fun).

One improvement that I'm going to make is mount the winch right to the loader bucket on the tractor and add and extension to the bottom of the loader bucket. This should allow me to use the winch and pull the basket directly into the loader bucket and transfer the slop.

I'll try to get some pictures of the basket posted tonite.

GKLOP

P.S. Make sure you use a big enough winch. I only used a 2500lb and should have gone bigger.

First Time posting a link to a photo. Hope it works.

http://s1208.photobucket.com/user/gklop/media/Basket-Resize_zpsab33vepq.jpg.html

Anyways, this worked pretty well scooping up muck and leaves. I'm thinking of adding some teeth for cat tails.

GKLOP

Thanks for the reply and for the photo. I like the basket idea to help collect the material. I'm not sure what I'll end up doing with all the material. It looks like I'll have that to figure out as well.

Thanks again,

P