**Update**

Well, I'm officially a little stuck with progress (or lack of). wink I've gotten a better feel on this pond since we've owned it since spring now. I plan to add the elbow on the outflow to hopefully raise the water level around 18"-30". I'll start at 18" and see how the water level settles in around the pond. For the past couple weeks now it's been pretty darn dry so the water has completely stopped coming into the pond. We've only dropped about 6", so not bad with the heat we've had to boot... adding an extra 18" may do wonders now and over the winter.

I met with a local excavator and he suggested a couple things. My main issue is while I like the size (1.7 acres), I'm realizing that the size limits maintenance, dredging and so on. At 150-200' wide it's simply not an easy excavation job even for a decent excavator which still only reaches out 30' or so.
Option 1: The quickest and cheapest would be to go around the perimeter and dig to whatever he could. Reach on his machine is 30' unless he rented a long arm. So he seemed to be thinking in that 12'-15'ish range.
Option 2: would be to expand the pond with a much deeper area which he seemed to think was best. Maybe another 1/4 to 1/3 acre or so. No sure what I think about this... sounds nice, but I still have 1.7 acres of shallow pond.
Option 3 (this one is my thinking and mentioned to him): Breech the dam and let it sit for a year or so... then have him come in with a dozer and clean house.

btw... the pond is probably around 30-40% moss/algae covered now on the surface (and it's thick from top to bottom on much of the pond). Is this something that I should kill off next spring? now? If we just dug a donut around the perimeter I'm assuming over time it would fill/fall in and level out... ??...?? Is this a reasonable solution for those that have done it?

The few Bluegill and Sunny's we added are doing really well in there (FAT and healthy)... About the only thing in the pond other than the fish we added are crawdads, clams and a decent population of fatheads the previous owner would have stocked years ago. I have seen a few little rock bass maybe?? But I'm convinced there's not a whole lot of anything in here... assuming a winter kill got 'em at some point since there's been no stocking for at least 10-15 years (or more probably).

Any additional thoughts guys? At this point I'm looking for our most economical solution (like most). We don't live on this property so it's tough to dive in to deep at this point on it... Thank you!! smile