You are at a crossroads. Decisions and planning. Nice place with potential. Work with existing pond or renovate and start over.
I would serioiusly consider or explore renovating PRIMARILY because of your pond's expanse of shallow water for 3/4 ac. In the renovation I would drain it down to low pool or drain completely to increase the maximyum depth to 10'12' and/or deepen the edges where all your weed/algae problems will occur. Weed algae problems are usually minimal during winter conditions. With all that shallow water of 2'-3.5' you will constantly fight weeds in warm weather esp if you feed the fish or with fertilization which ideally results in water visibilities/ transpariences of 18"-2'. Surface light can penetrate twice the secchi disk depths of 18"-2' for bottom weed growth. You have a lot of adjacent trees which will add lots of bulky organics to the pond which causes problems esp in shallow water. Get some estimates to dip, scoop or push out a lot of the OLD slop. The cost may not be a whole lot more than a good electro-shocking survey w/ written report. Or at least that money will help defray the renovation costs. IMO pond basin reshaping should cost around $4-$8K. If you don't renovate now when fishery is low quality, you may not be as willing to do it when pond has better and larger fish. Pond basin renovation will need to be done sooner or later. So if not now put it in your long term capital appropriations.
A drain to low pool will allow deepening of edges and mid depths and save the existing fish but will not allow increasing the maximum depth. Draining to low pool will also make it cheaper andmore efficient to kill off the existing fish with rotenone. I'm not sure that the value of existing fish is worth saving. Plus either way it will take some TIME to rebuild the fishery. Renovation first rebuilds the fishery in a morphologicially sound pond with adequate depth with fewer reoccurrring and continual weed/algae, shallow water, induced headaches. Long term chemical costs and efforts to fight excess weeds is also concern to consider if you do not renovate.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 02/19/11 10:42 AM.
