I was scared to dredge the pond because I was unsure how the fish would survive but I figured it was better to lose a few due to dredging than to lose everything due to a summerkill.
I too was very afraid that the low water level that turned to chocolate milk would kill the fish. They made it through fine.
I really want to thank Kasey and BZ for posting their work.
Since last spring I'd been planning on cleaning up the edges of my pond in August or early September, when my pond is usually at least a foot lower than the standpipe. Even with our so-called drought, we had a number of significant storms from early spring until now that dumped a lot of water in very short periods of time. Consequently, my pond has stayed plus/minus a few inches of the standpipe level all summer.
Anyway, I had a lot of willows that had sprung up around the back edge of my pond over the last couple of years. More cattails than I feel comfortable with were creeping in, and I'd been wanting to clean up some former erosion inflows that had become quite shallow.
Thanks to you guys, I put the backhoe on my tractor yesterday. I spent this afternoon excavating the worst corner of the pond. I pulled out several willows, several old stumps on the shoreline, and I dredged the edges where there was a lot of muck. I figure I temoved about 30 yards of mud and muck over about 50 feet of shoreline. I now need about three more afternoons, before winter, to finish.
I was amazed at how fast the water cleared. I created four smelly spoils piles. By the time I got them moved and spread with my loader bucket, the pond water looked almost normal. My one big koi, and at least one of my larger surviving medium-size catfish was checking it out as I was on my final spoils load. That was just before sundown. I did my normal evening feeding across the pond, and all the fish seemed happy.
Uffda!
Ken
