Hello All, I am a long time lurker and only very recent poster. I have a very small pond I had dug a 24 months ago and enlarged 6 weeks ago. I am in NW lower peninsula of Michigan. My goals are:
1/ a pleasing looking pond in the middle of a food plot I grow for deer and turkey viewing, 2/ to have a good deer watering hole, 3/ A fishing hole to whatever extent I can in a pond this size.
The pond is almost circular and about 1/8 acre in size when full with a small 10 ft in diameter island on the north side. It was only about 1/2 full last fall due to the dry fall. The maximum depth is about 10 ft so I would estimate the depth going into winter was 6 ft. The sides are very steel to get maximum water volume in this small size. I was away for the winter. This spring when we returned the pond was full and overflowing out it's lowest spot and stayed full to the top through early July when the rain stopped. The bottom is clay and we intentionally didn't dig any deeper than the clay was. It still looses water during dry spells.
We enlarged it to it's current size of 1/8 acre 6 weeks ago. We raised the bank in the lowest area about 2 ft with clay removed when we expanded ts size. We got little rain until about 3 weeks ago when we had a couple big rains and I got about an additional 2 ft of water into the pond from runoff into the drainage that feeds it. Since then the rain has been seldom and I lost about a foot of this gain. So. unless we have a rainy fall I expec the pond will be down to about 12 full by volume and about 5-6 ft deep in the deepest point for the winter.
I would like to raise some BG. My brother is a wholesale bait dealer and trapped a couple of quarts of minnows from a local lake and put them in about 2 months ago. We never saw a single dead minnow but also don't see them live. I expect they are still there. The water clarity is poor, maybe 6-8 inches through the clay colored milky color. I am sure the wildlife on the shore are not adding to the turpid water. It never really cleared up since it was dug 14 months ago. I read this past week about aluminum sulfate (alum) treatment and bought and sprayed a mixture of 50# and 70 gallons of water over the surface 4 days ago. I see very little change in clarity yet.
Now for the fish question(s). How many BG will a pond this size support with minimal maintenance? Should I consider only HBG and definitely not add wild run BG? If I were to buy HBG, can I add some this fall still and hope they winter over in this shallow water if I don't get serious rain yet before winter?
This is a great forum. I just subscribed to the magazine last week to learn even more. I am not in the league with you guye with over 1 acre ponds but I hope some of you will have experience with ponds (if I can call a hole this size a pond). Thanks in advance for your advise. Ruby Creek Ted

Welcome RCT, the only advice I would give is to use pumpkinseeds, and maybe Golden shiners, they are tough and from experience I know they can survive in a pond with severe winterkill. The experts should soon give you more advice.

Without regular snow removal in your snow belt area the pond will likely winter kill most every winter. I'm not sure what predator will be able to survive to keep any panfish from becoming too abundant. Ideally a pond this size (abt 75x75) would be a good candidate for male only BG or female only yellow perch if they could survive each year.

I would hit my brother up for tons of minnows and stock either WE, NP or Trout. Definitely would treat this winter as an experiment though! Could you keep some water open? Depending on availability in your area, open water could draw in some serious wildlife during a Michigan winter.

Thanks for the advise guys. Not quite what I was hoping to hear since there wasn't much optimism about raising fish in this small pond. I will hope that the modifications I made this summer will get me more water next year. I really don't want to make the pond much bigger and am afraid if I go deeper I will run out of clay and end up at groundwater level with less depth. Flowing wells are common in this neighborhood. That could be an option with the risk of getting too much flow although I suppose the inflow from a flowing well could be controlled to match the leakage or evaporation. I guess time will tell. I have a shallow well within about 300 feet to but pumping isn't real desirable either. I will watch and see what the next 9 months shows I guess. Thanks again. Ruby Creek Ted

RCT, On the subject of suspended clay there are posts about using hay to clear water. If you haven't seen them go back thru muddy water posts for the last 2 or 3 years. Good luck.