Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations cattails and habitat

I'm a new member and I have some questions about a 1/5 acre pond I've been working on this summer. The pond is 22 years old and 28 feet deep, it had cat tails growing all around it to a depth of 4 feet and I spent the summer in a wet suit pulling the plants and roots out of the muck and now have a pond to look at again. (and a massive compost pile!) The weeds only extended into the pond by about 5 feet because the banks are steep. I plan to add some tire reef type structures but I was wondering if it would pay to dredge the soft mud from the banks first. I have a 3" suction dredge but I question if it's worth the effort. The pond has a heavy inflow and and water removed by the dredge would be replaced by inflow in a matter of 1 or 2 days. Any opinions?

Nature designed cattails to hold loose soils. When you pulled them, you should have been able to extract the root, too. If not, you only "mowed" the grass by hand. They will come back.
If the soil is loose enough, by all means dredge. It's hard work, but isn't any tougher than pulling cattails. (been there). But, two small words of caution...when you suck out the soft soils, hand pull remaining cattail roots. And, be sure to quantify how much soil should be removed, to make sure the results are worth the effort.

The mud remaining from the cat-tail removal is very soft and possibly 6 to 8 inches thick, the mud has been raked with a long tined rake to catch all of the roots I missed in the pulling phase so the dredging shouldn't be too much of a problem. The dredge I'll be using is a floating suction dredge with a capacity of about 4 cubic yards per hour so I should be able to strip the bottom back to the original clay bottom. My concern is will the removal of the soft mud do more harm than good, I have a thriving population of mussels ( I picked out over 50 of them while pulling the cat-tails and raking and just threw them back into the shallows) and the frogs and salimanders which called the cattails home may be decimated without the mud. Will the addition of the tire reefs combined with airation to remove the stratification by aeration do the job as effectively, albeit more slowly, with less toll on the wildlife?

Here's a pretty straight forward law of nature. Change the environment, flora and fauna change. Whether it's an improvement or not is subject to debate. If you have solid goals, you are the boss of that environment. You are being a good steward by thinking through these decisions. Take the mud out...bad for mussels, good for fish. Bad for cattails, good for depth. It's a balancing act. Tire reefs are good for small fish to hide. They do little for frogs or reptiles. Whatever you do will impact something. Some things, like frogs and cattails, will be dramatically altered. But, you will have a much more aesthetically appealing pond, one in which you can wade without sinking to your belly button. So, the question comes back to you...is that what you want? If so, you are right on. If not, rethink.