I'm new to the forum and fairly new to ponds (2014). There's clearly a good deal of wisdom here, so I'm hoping this group will have some good advice.
I have a 3.5 acre pond in Central Texas that I believe was built in the late 1970s. (See the photo below.) It seems healthy and there's a good population of fish that we are working to manage as we learn more. Our problem is that two sections of the pond are filled with large, dead hardwoods. We are very happy to have them as habitat below the water. But we would like to remove the tops -- the parts you can see -- to make the pond look better. We have tried several things, including trimming what we could reach when the water was low, using comealongs and even taking a chainsaw into a canoe (something I would rather not repeat). I would love any advice you have on how to remove them and on whether we should let the removed parts sink to become habitat or remove them from the pond. I don't want to use chains to pull them out by the roots because I worry that could create a leak and destroy good fish habitat. Thanks for any advice you can share.
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https://www.dropbox.com/s/4z9g3mf6xuhqy5y/2015-05-16%203%20of%204.JPG?dl=0[/img]
