Hello Flame. Welcome to the forum.
I'll tell you a couple things I do and don't like about my pond, and you can see if they fit your situation and desires.
I REALLY like the bench style dam we chose to use. Rather than being a typical dam, it has a 10' wide flat "bench" that was designed to sit at waters edge a couple inches above full pool. The original intent of the bench is to stop wave action from eroding the bank. But we did not end up using the bench for its intended purpose. Instead, we put a layer of crushed rock over it so now it is about 5" above full pool. We further put crushed rock down the bank about 3' into the water to stop bank wave erosion that the bench was originally designed to do. Why? I REALLY like to be able to walk or ride out UTV around the pond on a flat surface only inches above the water. Instead of standing on a sloping bank to fish we are standing on flat ground, or even can sit chairs any place around the dam on flat ground. I think having this flat surface right up to water edge, plus an all weather surface, allows us to enjoy our pond a lot more than we otherwise would (the pond is less than 200' from our house). This bench area does flood if water rises up more than 5" into the 8" overflow pipe during a heavy rain event, but rarely stays up over a day as the water goes out the overflow quickly. The downside is it takes more dirt to create the dam so could increase the total cost of the project. In our case the dam is around about half the water surface area so is a significant amount of area. If your dam will be small or in a remote part of the pond, this might not even be important to you. But I sure like it on our pond.
I created some shallow swimming areas for our smaller grandkids and some shallow area for fish spawning. Put down rock and covered the areas with gravel. I wish I had
NOT done this, and in fact have been using my backhoe to dig out these areas as far as can be reached with it out into the pond, so essentially destroying what I can of them. They both became the perfect growing beds for Filamentous Algae (FA). Swimming areas and beaches are popular with some, and given enough work to keep them up they are probably great, but in my case they ended up not being used much and were covered with Filamentous Algae and the kids would not want to wade out through the FA anyway. We have a very nice, large dock and everybody that swims (even the smallest grandkids) like jumping off the dock to swim instead of going off the bank. So for my money, any resources considered for a swimming beach would be better spent on a nice dock extending out into the water with a good set of steps to get out of the water. That's me. Others may enjoy their shallow swimming areas just fine and I'm not putting them down. It just did not work out as I had planned for my situation. I suspect had I left the areas, the FA beds would eventually turn into weed beds. I'm currently deepening (working on it now, just as soon as I get off this computer
) almost everything around any shallow portion of the shore line.
Here is my introduction thread with pictures of my pond That is all I can think of for now. Hope this helps with ideas and will add more if I think of any.
