Hey folks,

I have been a lurker on here since I was a teenager (literally half my life ago), and before we were even done with undergraduate, my wife and I have been yearning for and planning to have our own self-sustaining trout habitat. Well, a little more than four years ago we found our dream piece of property, a former horse ranch (mostly forested, but with about 18 acres of pasture) at 3,000' in the Blue Ridge, right up at the highest ridge of the Appalachians at its latitude (the land includes the ridgetop and several valleys), which we bought after years of searching, because it was known to have three productive springs on it. I have since found six more springs, and after development of the springs and putting a house on the land, we are finally having several impoundments built this fall!

I am the lurker who posted a few years back about my findings with scuds of various species loving mulberry leaves, and ignoring basically all other leaves for the opportunity to chow down on mulberries. I have concluded, though, that mulberries are too thirsty and have roots that are too aggressive to be a good idea near a pond. I also discovered that they love barley straw even more than mulberry leaves, and we have a patch of that growing on the land now! For tree cover, my wife and I have decided that inside the otter fence, we will have Fagus grandifolia, Acer palmatum, and other species of tree that will provide cooling shade without sending deep roots, drinking too much, or dropping tannins and/or juglone in the water. I apologize for not dropping by that thread once it got started more, but life so often overtakes my interests. I will strive to stay active in this one, though, as with the construction going ahead, I have been on PB more recently than I ever have before!

We are using a pond design firm to plan and professionals to construct the impoundments, and given the productivity of the many springs that will fall 20 or more feet before they reach the surface level of the ponds, we have been assured that the water in the ponds, even in the summer, should never exceed 58 degrees. As the highest air temperature it has literally ever gotten on our land in the years we have owned it (being high up and above all the surrounding valleys) is 80 degrees, and in most years 74 is the highest temperature it ever gets, this is something we believe. The springs run clear, cold, and constantly all year, and even in summer droughts they do not decrease in flow or increase in temperature. Their strength also means that, we are told, even with the fairly large size that one of our ponds is going to be (over 2 acres and more than 50 feet deep in places, due to the mountain topography), water will move through them fairly quickly.

Thanks in no small part to the excellent advice and treasure trove of information that you fine folks have made here, we have the water chemistry (we know what minerals are necessary for healthy plankton and invertebrates and have a great supply of it) and forage base issues pretty well figured out (we have in aquaria in our house currently PK shrimp, Asellus aquaticus, Hyalella azteca, and five species of Gammarus). However, one area in which we still definitely need your expert guidance is that of what plants to have in the ponds.

There is one existing ancient (70+ years) stock pond on our land fed by one of our less-productive springs (still cold enough for trout, but we are expanding it greatly and improving the spring flow) that is about 4 feet at its deepest and has a lot of Myriophyllum spicatum (Eurasian Milfoil) in it, along with Lepomis macrochirus and Micropterus nigricans (BG and LMB, I believe; I'm still getting the hang of the abbreviations on PB), but that will be completely drained, dredged, and all of the bottom sediment (and then some) hauled away for berm construction at one of our shooting ranges down the slope from the pond.

We already know that we want these impoundments to be single-species habitats, each for a TBD variety of Oncorhynchus and/or Salvelinus, so we DEFINITELY don't want any centrarchidae (or any other fish species of any kind) in the ponds, and from what we see of the M. spicatum, we want to avoid that plant as well.

For the plants that we do want, I have only identified two species that I believe with any level of confidence we should have, one for almost certain, and one about which I am not as sure yet. Obviously, though, I could be dead wrong, and I defer to the expert knowledge to be found here.

The former (the plant about which I am most confident) is Vallisneria americana (American Freshwater Eelgrass), and the latter (in the "probably" column) is Nasturtium officinale (Watercress). Both of these are species that I have encountered in the wild when fishing for trout in the streams of the Appalachians and the high alpine creeks and lakes of Wyoming and Idaho that have good water chemistry, so their mere association with and presence in the best trout fisheries I have encountered in nature recommend them strongly to me as desirable plants.

The ponds we are building will be fairly deep in most places, and since V. americana only grows a certain amount up from the bottom and does not apparently overtake a pond or choke it out, it seems perfect, in that it will provide beds and refuge for fry, as well as the PK shrimp, water lice, isopods, and various scud species, while keeping most of the water open and free to flow. These beds of V. americana on the bottom from 6' to 30' in depth should greatly increase the carrying capacity of the ponds for forage base; giving food, refuge, and a lot of living space for the various benthic macroinvertebrates, as well as shielding the fry and parr from cannibalism by their parents. Indeed, I have hooked into many trophy trout while stripping a nymph or reeling a spinner or spoon just over to the top of, or along the edges of, those deep eelgrass beds.

Concerning the N. officinale, while I know it is not native, I have happened upon it living wild so often when doing field collections for study of the various coldwater scuds (G. fasciatus, G. lacustris, G. minus, G. pseudolimnaeus, etc.) in the Appalachians, coastal plain, and even out west, in addition to fishing for trout in the wild, that it seems like it is not a noxious or invasive species (I gather that to be invasive, a non-native must be environmentally harmful). Also, I grow it in the coldwater aquaria that contain the different coldwater scud species and the ones with pet trout (the plant dies in room-temperature water), and the trout seem to love relaxing in and under it, while the scuds eat it and congregate in it. While in an aquarium it is often floating, in the wild I always see it rooted in the bottom, and neither in floating mats, nor in water deeper than a couple of feet. Furthermore, it seems to grow well out of a gravel bottom, which will be the substrate of much of the pond bottoms in the shallower and mid-depth areas.

Just as I am very welcoming of y'all, who know far more than I, correcting me about the efficacy or advisability of V. americana, I am even more open to being corrected in thinking that N. officinale would be a good plant for a cold, moving-water trout pond. What I gather about its potential benefits, beyond what I have observed in nature and aquaria, however, is that apparently when it grows in the shallows around the edges of ponds (it is said not to grow in or invade water deeper than this), it not only provides more habitat and carrying capacity for forage base, but does a good job at filtering and cleaning the water of the pond, keeping excess nutrients and siltation out.

Basically, I am hoping to learn whether I am on the right track with these two species, and advice on any other species I should introduce to the ponds. For example, beyond the V. americana and N. officinale, I have observed in my favorite trout spots, I also see a lot of moss. However, I would not even know with what genera to begin, let alone species, in identifying these beneficial mosses. Therefore, any tips on moss species and reputable outfits where I can source the correct species, would be greatly appreciated. What little I already know on the topic of plants in fish ponds I learned less from my field guides and pond design books, and mostly from y'all, but I am hoping to expand that knowledge considerably so I can maximize the quality of the habitat my wife and I are building, after almost 18 years together as a trout-fanatic couple, for our favorite fish!

Thanks in advance!