Originally Posted By: snrub
I have used a backhoe to go around a pond and deepen the edges. It worked well for me, and a track hoe (that can pivot 360 degrees) would be twice as good. With a regular backhoe and a pond edge, you quickly run out of room to stack dirt/mud. An excavator can get the pile farther away and with more room to stack before having to move the muddy mess. There are pictures of my prrocess in one of my threads if you want me to dig up a link to them.

One thing that is hard to tell when digging in water is what you have and have not dug. You only have the "feel" of the bucket. There are places I thought I got and left some ridges. I just call them purposeful fish structure and pretend I planned it that way. grin

Be aware that with some soils and areas this could cause a pond to leak by disturbing the pond bottom seal. That is rarely the case in our area (unless a sandstone outcrop or gravel vein is hit - possible but not common). But from your description it sounds like you have regular water flow so you might be ok.


All good stuff... thank you!! I trimmed up some of the 3'-5' grass around the pond today. After trimming, I see that I should be able to get pretty darn close around most of the pond with the mini. I'll likely dig the shorelines and use that dirt to build the shoreline up a bit better all the way around. Out of curiosity, how much reach do you have with your backhoe and how deep did you go around our shorelines?
Regarding fish... I'm not a pro either but I'm pretty comfy thinking there's not much in it other than what we added. I mentioned that I put 50 adult BG in... I read 15-20 per acre when stocking adult. However I did add another 100-150 little guys that we had in a little garden pond to at home. My kids put 4 BG in at home a couple years ago and they exploded to that 100-150... hopefully they'll do the same in the big pond and then we can get some LMB soon too. I still plan to do the minnow trap for kicks though as well. Thanks for those ideas...

One of the little guys we put in... smile



Here's in water source coming in... cleaned it up so I can get at it when the mini comes. Thinking about digging this fairly deep...




Shoreline across cleaned up a bit... a whole lotta cut'n to do yet!