Bill, that was an incredibly helpful post. Thank you so much!! I'll be re-reading this 100 times to make sure I get every nugget of wisdom haha.

To answer your questions:

1 & 7. The weed in question is "pondweed". We had a guy from the soil and water district come and that's what he told me. We don't have any filamentous algae problems, but the pondweed grows from about 80% of the floor of the pond. It's a lot.

2. I put 3 grass carp in there last year. They didn't seem to do much, but hopefully their appetite kicks into gear this year. I may add a few more in. I got a permit for up to 8.

5. I've probably removed... 25-30 bass so far. Those are of all sizes. My largest was 18" long... but skinny as a rail. I'm guess that's one that was thrown in there by a friend last year... and subsequently began to starve. Pretty gross looking fish actually. Anyways, of the 25, most were in the 8-12" range and underweight.

Here are a couple follow up questions of my own:

1. My plan is to continue trying to pull every bass out of there, to "reset" the pond with healthy bass (maybe pellet fed). At what point can I be sure that I've removed "enough" of the bass? I did a lot of fishing with minnows towards the end of the summer and caught a bunch of them on those... but towards the end of the year I wasn't catching anything. Do you think I've caught them all out? I want to remove as many as I can, so that I can start fresh.

2. When is the best time of the year to remove weeds? I'd hate to pull weeds out while either my bass or bluegills are spawning, and so disrupt the process. Should I try to rake before the spawn, or wait until after? And when exactly would the key spawning time start?

3. The water in my pond has no "green tint" to it. It's blueish and sometimes brownish, but never green. Should I be fertilizing? And if so, what time of year would I do that to help the zooplankton growth, without putting the weed growth on overdrive?

Thanks all.