Ok, yes, I have tea colored water which is clearly from the leaves that fall in and not from ground water or runoff. My pond is small so I can rake as far as I can reach all the way around.
It bothers me to see hundreds of pounds of leaves fall in to the pond every fall but like you said, unless you are out there with a bit skimmer rope or net pulling them out every day, it is hard to keep up. When it is windy they tend to group up on one side or the other so I could probably use a seine net on weekends to get some out, but I just tend to let them sink
Since we have oaks, all winter we get more in the water and on the ice. Every spring I have a huge mat of black stinky algae and leaves out to about 4' deep all the way around. I rake it up on shore and let it dry and then fork the stinking wet nasty stuff into a wagon and haul it in the woods.
I can't rake it all as the leaves float and move around while raking. But getting the majority out helps and I was thinking last night while feeding that I can't see any leaves at all in the shallows. Nice sandy bottom. I think my crayfish may be helping consume the decaying leaves and my aeration hopefully is helping as well.
However if I pull up the aerator the deep water certainly still has a layer of dead, black, nasty leaves yet.
So raking may be well worth it. I made my own cement weights by pouring some rapid setting concrete in small clear 6 oz plastic cups (about 1/3 full) and then ripped open the cups when hard. I put pieces of wire in the cement while hardening and use the wire like twisty ties to tie to the top of my rake. I have a rope on the rake and throw it out about 6 feet into the pond, let it sink and pull it in to rake.
I'm curious how field runoff has tannins in it but maybe the leaves sitting in the field also stain the runoff water?
