palmerdad, thanks for bumping this thread. I've had a "light bulb moment" as a result of re reading the entire piece.

In spring of 2017 I ran two old 9.9 Evinrudes on small boats in my 1/4 acre pond. I was repairing and tuning the motors. The planing round and round stirred up all sorts of mud. What I didn't realize until just now is that stirring the bottom also released lots of fertilizer so to speak in the form of bottom muck.

That summer we had an outrageous FA and elodea explosion, unlike any other of the 10 years we've owned the pond. The Elodea reached the surface on most of the pond; the FA was an incredible nuisance. Now I can see that stirring up all those nutrients probably led to the vegetation's excessive growth.

These past two years I have not run an outboard in the pond, not even one time. We have had a manageable amount of FA and elodea instead of the weed bonanza of 2017. Today was the first day this year that I had to get out and rake any debris. And, that is mainly because the cottonwood bud scales have fallen along with the cotton and were floating around with the small amount of FA present.

Guess I won't be racing around the pond no more. Ha! It was a lot of fun while it lasted.