Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Pond in trouble

Heres my situation, I hope some of you guys can put your two copper pieces in and tell me how to proceed.

My family just picked up a nice piece of land in the upper new york region with a sweet 1.7 acre pond on it. There are a few cats in there i have observed but nothing worth catching. The pond is fed via "underground spring (thats what they all say) 2 small brooks avergaing 75-100 gallons per minute but they dry out during a hot summer and sometimes are basically providing 10-15 gallons per minute during a summer rain, it is surrounded by State Woodland so the temp of the pond is relatively cool, The pond is about 10-15 years old teeming with life, but also teeming with big pines, thick trees on the levys which surounds about 60 percent of the pond exterior, the other 20 percent of the border is at the bottom of a small steep hill which clearly provides a basic underground water source and runoff. The soil seems to be mostly clay and my observations of the run off area show that the pond is not losing water from any of the levys despite the fact they are densly stacked with smaller trees.

My problem is there is a wetland thick bush area in the middle of the pond that was never dredged out when the pond was formed because the bulldozer operator didnt properly dig out the pond on his first attempt. Basically i was told as he started digging out the back area of the pond the water started coming in and he had to abort...basically what i am left with is two pond (one being 5 feet deep inthe center, and the other being 12 feet deep int he center however each side getting separated during the summer months. I wonder if it is due to all the trees in surrounding the pond which i am told are taking 100-150 gallons a day each. I have stocked the pond with fingerling trout (about 300) just to see if they can survive on summer season (its supposed to be cold and deep enough) and about 3000 fatheads just in case some trout do make it through the summer and I can continue stocking trout. I like bass but am a troutman at heart but am sadly realizing I will have to make it a bass pond if i dont figure out a solution to why the water is drying out.

I dont want to cut all the trees as they provide good shade, but at the same time is it possible that the trees are the main reason i am losing inches per week. It gets to the point that the two ponds seperate and i dont have good access to fly fish the deeper section. (Dont laugh but the first fish i caugt was a 1 and half inch minnow that somehow landed a midgefly i cast in an effort to see how big the trout were getting..)

I also dont want to add the expense of pumping well water into the pond, just to keep it deep enough though i am realizing i might not have an alternative

My dream is to dredge out the middle area and turn the pond into a good 3 acres big and make it at least 20 feet deep with proper aeration so that I can grow big trout in it that will live for more than 3 years... Is it possible to dig deeper to keep the water deep enough to support trout and expand the surface area to 3 acres if i am already having trouble with 1.7.

Please help )

Could be the trees, could be a leak. Don't know how you can tell other than killing trees and finding out. Killing trees will help your water retention, without a doubt. But will it solve the problem of your pond drying out? It is impossible to know without trying.

I you want to deepen the pond, now sounds like the time to do it. Before you help it to retain water and begin growing desirable fish.

I don't know if this will help but here's my 2� worth.

A friend has a pond that's about 1-1/2 acres and is kind of like yours in that it's sort of two different ponds in one. The upper section is an old old pond that is fairly shallow and weedy. A few years back they decided they wanted a bigger pond and built a large dam below the small one and dug out the area between the two dams to make a wide deep hole. The new water level is almost exactly the height of the old dam leaving a long island in the middle of the pond that is the old dam. Then when the lower section filled up they brought in a large backhoe (i think) and dug out 5-6 foot deep channels in the old dam along each shoreline to allow the aquatic life to move between the two sections. It's an awesome pond now that I really like to fish.

Because you have this barrier in the middle of your pond I wonder if you can use it to your advantage. My suggestion is that you look into pumping dry half the pond. Then have a more competent bulldozer operator fix up that part the way you want. Then let that half fill and pump the other half dry. Then bulldoze that part the way you want. Then have sombody cut some channels along the shorlines in that dam that's in the middle of the pond.

You could even get creative and have them build up the middle dam so that it could become an island year-round and maybe build a bridge from one or both shores out to that island which would give you easy shore fishing access to every surface inch of the pond. Another nice thing about doing it this way is that when you drain down half the pond you could capture any decent fish you expose and move them to the full half so you wouldn't be starting completely from scratch as far as your fish populations are concerned.

It might be quite a bit of work to do it this way but I think it would be really cool. That's my 2� worth.