Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? Overgrown pond rehab

I'd drain it completely first and then build it back to your liking. To each his own but that's what worked fantastically for me.

I stubbornly tried to avoid doing that with my own lake for too long, but we finally cut the dam and let it dry for a year. I wished I would have done it sooner to tackle our problems with it. The access that the dried lake allowed was priceless. I was able to rebuild our dock, and strategically build and place fish structure. The entire banks were scraped of brushed and landscaped so that we could maintain a mowable, lawn quality area around it. I can now easily stop any willow and cattail growth as soon as they emerge.

We also restocked it to our liking and are managing those fish. After fishing today, I couldn't ask for a better mess of fish at this point. I am amazed at how large they've all grown in such a short time (except the redear) and how fat, colorful and overall healthy they look as compared to the fish before we undertook our rebuild.

Draining the lake made it so much easier to work with and recovery came about far quicker than I had anticipated.