Welcome to the forum. I know what the Mrs wants, but I wish you good luck live trapping the muskrats. Personally? I'd find their runs and use 110 conibears. Snap and done.

You might not be seeing any plant life because of it being winter, or not enough sunlight getting to the bottom of the pond to germinate seeds. I can't imagine how much time it would take to dredge the pond out, I would think you would run out of water first.

Go out in a boat, take a piece of EMT tubing and shove it into the pond bottom as far as you can. You know how deep the water is, the difference between the bottom of the EMT tube and the water level on it is the thickness of the muck you have to deal with.

Measure across the pond. If the slope was a 2:1 slope, how deep would it be in the center? (for every 2' horizontal the bottom drops off 1'.) Remember to go out from the dam the correct distance to measure across the pond..... I doubt it was ever deeper than that.

i.e. 50' across = 12' max depth.

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