We're digging our first pond on our future home site of 15 ac. So far we've cleared about 1.5ac of woods to dig a 1 ac pond. I've read Basic Pond Mgmt and Perfect Pond, Want One....I still have ?? Many of the pictures in the books and the pics that I've found on this forum are of construction with dry soil. Excavating shelves, drop offs, etc look fantastic, but we started digging today and already have water.

The excavaters went 8' down and already there's foot of water with clay substrate...this is good, but I can't put the topography in the lake that I wanted b/c it's a sloppy mess and I don't think pumping it is feasible.

So my question for the pros is....With a 1 ac oval shaped pond what contours would you put in..The long shore line is currently dropping to 8-10 ft rapidly. Do I need to try and incorporate shelves for spawning or will this create weed problems. What do I do?? How would you contour this pond in the sloppy clay?