Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? On Willow Pond

The pond garden still needs to be harvested. If not harvested almost always the bass will eventually overeat the food chain and there will be mostly small bass. Management and harvest now needs to be even more watchful because the pond is twice as big which means more fish need to be harvested to maintain the proper balance toward your goals. If you have no goals for the pond then nature will create its balance which may or may not be a high quality fishery. It all depends.

You may want to contact a professional fish manager for advice for adding a higher lever of top line predator to help thin out the small bass.

Well, an unfortunate set of circumstances are bringing this project back. So, we have a local dirt digger who I use a lot for work that I had come look at the pond the other day. Turns out he is also a pond builder, he answered every question I could think of from reading here and even had a few additional thoughts/advice on my situation. He is one of the more respected contractors in this area, so of course he stays very busy. He is planning to come clear and grub the overgrowth as soon as he has a free day and then we'll get everything laid out for when he can do the pond, we're thinking late summer/early fall. In the mean time, I'm going to start getting the pond pumped down and ready. The Golden Shiner population has exploded here and I'm wanting to try to keep some for stocking in the new pond, does anyone have a good setup for keeping them temporarily?

After what has to be the longest running pond thread with no real progress, an excavator is finally on site and working. Within the willows there are some massive piles of rock and old concrete (I assume intended for the pond at one point) so early work will be most clearing all that away and removing a couple big trees so we can get a good final plan laid out for the pond.

View from the back deck this morning when he first moved in:

That's always a good feeling when the big boy toys show up. Take as many pictures as ya can. Looks like it will be a beautiful spot.