It is a good bit above the river level at normal stage. I don't know exactly how high, but safe to say the normal river level is below the bottom of the ponds. I know the water leaches out through the sandy soils, but I am not sure if it goes the other way when the river is high (but not actually flowing in). The water levels of both are up right now, but that is at least partially due to the high amount of rain recently. I will pay attention to that in the future.

The ponds front on the highway, and until we bought the property, lots of locals fished them pretty regularly. We have now gated it off and greatly reduced the trespassing (but have not eliminated it). I would think the other end of the stunting issue is that we may be in recovery from overfishing.