Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Selecting a site Drone footage of pond build - Livingston Co., MO

The last few weeks have been really wet for us. The first week of May was the first time water ever went down the overflow. I think it has been running most days since that time. The emergency spillway has even been used twice now. I set the grade on the emergency spillway to be about 8 inches higher than the lowest point of my overflow pipe. Since the dock is fixed, and at full pool the water is just an inch or two below the dock, I didn't ever want water to get too high on it. You will see in some of the pictures that the water is about half way up on the 2x12's on the dock. I'm not sure it would get much higher with an 8" pipe running full bore, and a 14' wide emergency spillway running a couple inches deep with only about 12-14 acres of runoff. My emergency spillway doesn't have any vegetation on it yet as I just got it to final grade after adding on to my overflow pipe and before putting my screen up this spring. The spillway is long, wide, flat, and dug into virgin ground so there was very minimal washing. I will probably seed it with a grass clover mix this fall. I had a few kamikaze Shiners that died up against the screen, but I saw several scurrying back to deeper water.

Now, onto the fun part; managing the body of water to produce fast growing, healthy Smallmouth, Walleye, and Yellow Perch. Here's where I am at thus far:

October 2018 - 20lbs. of FHM and 1000 Northern Crayfish
March 2019 - 100 Redears and 20lbs. of Golden Shiners
May 2019 - 30lbs. of FHM

Future Stocking Plan:
Fall 2019 - approx. 80 SMB and 200 YP
Spring 2020 - approx. 60 Walleye

My goal is to have fewer numbers and better quality. I'm hoping to have a massive forage base by this fall. I'm planning to build a .2 acre body of water to raise Shiners (and maybe another species) and supplement in the coming years. I'm really excited to get this off the ground and open to suggestions. I plan to aerate the pond with 4 diffusers once my budget allows later this year. Any advice would be greatly appreciated and I thank you in advance. I plan to periodically post and keep this all updated with successes/failures. I also plan to get my drone up and get some good footage to share when the weather calms down a bit (another 4-5" predicted for the next week).