Looking back on my pond project and considering the time of year, I would build the dock now. Even at a 1/4 acre a dock would be handy for swimming, sunbathing and fish feeding. I would plan to plant grass seed in about two weeks. Mid August is an ideal time for seeding in Ohio. Prepare the seed bed, spread seed and starter fertilzer as recommended and use plenty of straw, 100 bales/acre. Water daily if there is no rain by any means necessary. Watering will be key to a good stand. A parial stand with partial erosion will be difficult to correct later. I recently built a new house and tried out several turf seed blends from name brand to no name. The best performing was an athletic turf blend from the local grainery. When the pond was built we pushed a few inches of topsoil down a couple of feet below full pool level and seeded it. When the pond finally stabilized, grass grew several inches lower than the overflow pipe. A year later when the pond was very low in August we put down Geotextile fabric and had #2 limestone placed. The erosion line where the grass stopped growing made a good guide for the operator. If you do decide to go ahead and place the rip rap now, you may consider cutting down the soil a few inches making a ledge so the stone can be placed lower than the turfgrass mowing height. This will cut down on trimming. When choosing a width of the rip rap band keep in mind your slope and how much your water may fluxuate. For example, if your pond has 5/1 sloped bank and the water level drops 2', 10' of bare bank will be exposed. Here are a couple of links that might be handy.

http://www.pondboss.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=20;t=003246

http://www.pondboss.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=20;t=004290;p=1



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