First post but have been reading the site for the past few months since I purchased a property with a 1/2 acre pond. I purchased the property in December but had looked at it several times in the fall.
Prior owner said the pond was 18-20 feet deep and it may have been when it was built in the 50s or 60s but he did not do any sort of maintenance that I am aware of. After taking a boat out and testing a few spots I found it to only be about 9.5' deep in the middle, disappointing to say the least. The silt does seem to be soft for several feet. As the picture below shows there is little around for trees for organic matter so I believe most of the sediment is from erosion and the upstream ponds. The pond will turn hot chocolate brown during heavy rains then turn back to the blue/green color which looks normal for the area quite quickly.
There seems to be little to no structure in the pond. The only thing other than the sediment is the limestone around the dam and some smaller gravel around where some muskrats live(d). There is also zero vegetation in the water but that is likely because of the muskrats. I plan on trapping them but it will be a constant problem with two ponds just above mine, although they are considerably smaller at maybe 50' diameter. I was out on the ice this winter and dropped my camera down and could tell the bottom was fairly smooth and maybe some BG nesting holes here and there. No leaves or other debris.
PO said there was 5# LMB in the pond and a single koi. I tried worms and some jigs with no hits before winter came. I did catch one nice sized pan fish through the ice however and lots of them around the camera. I thought something maybe happened to the koi because it took two months until I saw it trolling near the surface. I have yet to confirm a LMB of any size though. I did see thousands of tadpols in November/December in the shallows that were fairly good sized.
I know from reading on here the answer to de-mucking would be to break the dam and use a dozer/track hoe to clean it out. I have not inquired about any of the enviro sludge pumping services yet. I would like to try a full trash pump first and see how that does cleaning up around the dock at a minimum. I do have a 12' jon boat that I made into a 90hp jet boat which I could use for a venturi pump if needed. Being that there is little debris in the water to clog an intake screen and top layer of the sediment is soft I think I will have some success with this approach.
The plan is to try the trash pump here in a month or two when it warms up before adding any structure and forage base. I'd assume the muskrats must be gone before having success with plants as well and the plan is to live trap them and relocate (per the Mrs).
