Thank you for your advice...

1. The area around the spring is always nice and green. It's not a spring in the sense of a hole where water comes running out...it's more like a low spot where the water collects. I live in the "red clay hills". This part of AL is rolling hills of red clay with no rocks. I think where I live it's just a low spot where the water collects and can't percolate out. It flows out of the lowest side of this "bowl" slowly...more like a slow trickle. When it's flowing. It's the beginning of a small stream.

2. I have slope WAY upstream but where I want the pond (the only place it will work) it's flat. Some slight hills go UP on each side but it's flat all the way across my property into the neighbors. Think of it as a big flat valley that spreads out flat upstream with some hills sticking out of the valley at the mouth and all of it in a bowl. ANY dam, even a few feet would be higher than the neighbors property and water would back all the way uo into his land.

So, $5-7k is HIGH for a 1/2 acre dug out pond?

3. RES? You mean those killers? Are you sure? I don't want my bass hiding in the corners and pissing themselves...

So you're saying that BG reproduce too fast and I'll have too many with just 100 or so bass to eat them? You're saying that RES would reproduce slower? But wouldn't there be too few for fishing?

I've read that aeration is good for the fish and good to keep the alge away...correct? That way I shouldn't need anything to eat the alge?

Thanks...