Well I went to my pit today and I'm not an expert, but the spatterdock looked around 3/4 dead(brown, discolored leaves or Lilly broken off of stem) to me. So therefore I decided not to apply the roundup. In the summer the spatterdock covers the entire area, but come the fall with it becoming dormant for the winter it now doesn't take up nearly the same amount of the pit. Honestly I knew I should have asked for advice sooner in the year, but I've just had higher priorities, building my first house, OT at work and Marine Reserves. I'll just have to wait till next summer to try the roundup. I actually won't have to worry about the spatterdock if we don't have a very wet year in 2019. Because my pit is already 3.5-4 foot low due to the drought we had and the little runoff I get coming in. That was one thing I really like about your ponds John is that they all seemed to get a lot of runoff(I don't know if this is the proper term, but I mean land that water flows down that helps feel up your ponds). My pit being made in the early 1900's solely for coal mining, does not hold water well, do to lake of clay and not much runoff. If we have just normal rainfall levels this year or another drought, a big portion of my pit will dry up.
Now that I'm done with the house and will be moving in shortly I plan to take managing my pond much more seriously. It will definitely be easier to manage my pond when I live only 30 yards from it instead of 30 miles away. I have many projects I plan to try in the coming year.
Sorry for the long boring post. Thanks for all the advice everyone, I'm sure I'll now know what to do next year when the time comes.
