Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? Too shallow?

Hey there, forum buddies. I have a property with 2 ponds that I try to evaluate as much as I can when home (I work overseas). Last time there I took a Deeper Pro fish finder (GREAT gadget, by the way) and used it to map the depth of my ponds. The small half acre read 4-5 feet deep with a max depth of 6, but it was teeming with bluegill and black Crappie so I wasn't concerned. However, the 2 acre pond read about 3 feet everywhere with a max depth of 4 feet that I could find. This was very surprising and I first thought the instrument must be reading incorrectly. I would really like to stock this pond with Bass in December, but is it too shallow? How deep do bass need the water to be? Also, on that note, does anyone have a recommendation for who to call to have fish delivered in the Bristol, TN area? Thanks in advance

That is very shallow. Fish can live in 4 ft waters but the likelihood of DO problems is high.

You didn't say if there are fish in the large pond now. If there aren't any, I would probably add 50 or more small BG now and see how they're doing in the spring. If you still have BG, I'd add 25 3 to 5 in LMB and see how they do. If the depth of the pond doesn't drop below 3 ft, I'd guess the fish would do OK. Green SF have a reputation for living in the worst of conditions, so you might add a few of those if some of their other bad rep doesn't disturb you too much; also redear SF might do well and would do no harm. If the BG results are encouraging, you can add the others in the spring. You could add CC still later, and then you'd have a pretty typical stocked pond. CC compete with LMB, so you might not want them, but they fight hard, will hit artificial lures, grow fast, and are good to eat.

I have not seen signs of fish (or perhaps I just could not catch any). What I do have is an abundance of frogs and tadpoles. If there are fish, they didn't bite nor did they show interest in the grasshoppers I threw into the pond to lure them. My assumption is there could have been a fish kill at some time. This pond is fed by runoff and has no regular inlet of fresh water. I do have an aerator ready to install in anticipation of stocking fish.

In my opinion, if the water stays in the pond long enough for the fish to survive, there will be weeds all over the pond because the sunlight can reach the pond bottom in all places.

Bottom diffuser aeration systems are inefficient in shallow water ponds compared to ponds that are 10'+ deep.

If there are no fish in the 4 ft deep pond (as far as you can tell)and given your location I would bet the pond winterkills. if so you can either make it deeper or test for winterkill. To do the later get a few BG and or minnows and put them in and see what happens. I would not risk the cash on buying fish to stock without more info or a deeper pond.

Thank you for the expert advice, it is much appreciated. Looks like I will just have to be patient about stocking fish and work on making this pond deeper. Perhaps drain out the water and dig a trench with my tractor to the depth of 4-5 feet? Add clay to the trench? That would probably be a good time to place my bottom defuser aerator.

If you are going to deepen your pond in TN the depth goal of 25% of the pond should be 8ft.