Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? Trying to take advantage of the drought.

Hi!
My family has property in southwest KS with four ponds on 220 acres of grassland which range 3.5-8 acres. Unfortunately 3/4 have gone dry with this years drought. The ponds' depths are from 4-6 feet up to 10 ft by the dams. As this is not the first time for a couple of these ponds to go dry, we would like to dredge them deeper while we can.
Any recommendations for depths to shoot for?
One of the ponds (8 acres) is used for waterfowl hunting. Recommendations for pond plants to attract waterfowl but not be too invasive?
Any benefit to planting the pond bottoms in wheat while they are dry?
Thank you!

I recently saw some recommendations to plant barnyard grass to attract and feed ducks in wetlands. I found this because a wetland that we recently had built has a bunch of this coming up from existing seed reserves. I did not recognize this weed before researching this. It is a weed, so you should be careful that it won't spead where you do not want it. The advantage that I see for barnyard grass over wheat, is that it will likely grow well and reseed without additional work. It seems to like drying mud flats. When Fall rains refill the area, appearently ducks love the seed heads, but that assumes the water level only rises a foot or 2.

I like the idea of about 14 ft for depth. Is there anyway to also enlarge the size of the ponds so they can hold more water? Droughts seem to come more often and stay longer.

I would take a look at what is the recommended depth for ponds in your area to go thru a winter without worrying about winterkill. Then figure out what the lowest water level was in the ponds as your temporary "full pool level". Then make the ponds the appropriate depth from that full pool level.

I dug mine down 22', it filled in 2' to 3' with sediment from Hurricane Ike, and I still had 11' of water even tho my pond was down almost 6' last winter.

Thanks for everyones' replies. Not sure it's possible to enlarge the pond appreciably. Most years it's not at full capacity now. We get a lot of wind evaporation on the plains of Kansas. My lowest water level is "dry" and KDWP recommends 15' to prevent winterkill in western KS. I'm not sure I can get them 15' deeper but I guess anything would help at this point.
Thanks again!