I'm in the same boat as you with a pond on the edge of large timber and most of the watershed draining wooded areas, so I assume I get a lot of nutrient load from the drainage. Last summer here in Pennsylvania we were hit by the tail end of 3 huricanes and had several inches of rain with each one. These cleaned out the stream channels and dumped the load in the pond, with resulting mud and algae. The pond was unswimable and unfishable most of the summer. So this year I did several things to try to prevent it and all added together they are working very well. I'm just not sure which ones had the most benefit. I suspect they are listed below in the order of most benefit, but would really like to hear others opinions.

The first thing I did was to build a sediment pond upstream of the main pond to catch the leaves and debris. (I've had a question out on this page for a while with no response, and am still wondering if I should try to get rid of the algae in the sediment ponds or let it grow to help use the nutrients before they leave the upper pond) These sediment ponds stop all upstream crud from getting to the main pond but do nothing for the leaves from about 20 big Oaks and Walnuts around the edge of the pond. I already had one sediment pond on a different drainage into the main pond and like using it to grow minnows, tadpoles etc that reproduce in huge numbers as long as I keep game fish out of it.

I had some algae show up around the edges and also floating globs in early spring. Almost immediately after seeing it I added some blue pond dye and hit the edge with a small dose of Cutrine plus (about a half gallon cutrine in 4 gallons water. I sprayed about a gallon of the mixture for four consecutive days after the water temperature hit 60 degrees.

As soon as the ice was out I put in some barly bales, but have little evidence of their effect.

The main pond also has about six 18 inch Koi and a couple dozen 12 inch goldfish that were in an earlier small pond and originated from my kids aquarium. Just to see what affect these goldfish and Koi have I threw the bass and bluegill that were in the aquarium all winter into the pond and restocked the aquarium with a few small Koi and goldfish, along with some algae from the pond. I've put a pretty good sized blob (3 or 4 inches in size)of algae into the aquarium every day for a week or so and each time within a couple hours it's all eaten. I've seen both the Koi and goldfish eating it. So based on this and the price of the goldfish (6 cents each at a local pet store - just ask for feeder goldfish) I added about 100 of them to the new sedimemt pond. From past experience they grow fast and produce thousands of young. The small ones tend to hang out near the overflow and get washed into the main pond during rain and you can see the bass and bluegill lined up at the inlet to pick off the easy meal. I've seen no evidence of them getting too populated since only the original largest ones survive and no young ones make it to maturuity. If they ever did get too populated their habit of hanging out near the surface would make them easy to shoot or end up as Herron food.

Since I prefer low maintenance, permanaent solutions, and had some bottom growing weed problems last year, I planning on getting a couple grass carp also.

In general, I'm just doing everything I can to beat the algae, with a preference for cheap, low maintenance and relatively permanent solutions. So far this year the pond looks the best it has since the first year it was built.