Finally - if you are going to invest so much time and effort to develop your cool water species fishery, research cost of popping a well to help provide supplemental irrigation. If your water table is high, depth cost will be lower as will pump size needed which reduces cost on pump plus power to run it. You only need 25 GPM to keep up with drought for a pond that size.
Depending on how well it is sealed, or rather how much it leaks. With my pond, right now, it will leak 18 gpm. Pond is dug in sand, in a high water table area. Pond is down 54" right now. *I THINK* that if I were to pump more water into the pond, the level will rise, more bottom area of the pond will be exposed to water, more water in the pond will mean more water depth and the resulting more psi per square foot on the pond bottom. That (I think) will result in more GPM leaking out.
My well pumps 25 gpm. If I want to raise the water a foot in depth, it will take 31 days of pumping. If the well pumps 50 gpm, I can raise the water level that amount in 7 days due to the amount of leaking vs. the amount going into the pond. I don't feel comfortable in having a well pumping less than 100 gpm into my pond, and triple that would be even better. Maybe, just maybe if I keep it at full pool the amount of water leaking out will slow over time due to the surrounding water table in the soil getting artificially high, and possibly (but it's just a WAG) of the fines in the water plugging up the leaks.
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