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Please make some measurements (metric or english) of the largest pellets or take a close clear picture of the feed on a ruler.

Tentative Comments.
Until the small lake is filled comments are generalizations based on a new water gravel pit lake.

No surface runoff and mostly ground water intrusion the nutrient concentration in the water column should be low with a low nitrogen to phosphorus ratio generally indicating a low density, good quality phytoplankton community. This will feed or produce a good zooplankton community. Both a good basis of the food chain.
Low phytoplankton density and lack of surface water runoff will heavily contribute to clear water conditions. Secchi disk measurements will strongly influence the water depth at where phytoplankton and submerged vegetation will be able to grow and produce dissolved oxygen aka DO.

The initial DO test results of 9 mg/L back in 2024 are normal for early summer for your type of lake. In the future if the lake does not develop low secchi disk measurements around 2 ft or less and large surface algae films do not develop, at this point you should not need artificial aeration in this lake/pond. Get me some Secchi measurements and I will elaborate more on this topic.

Moderately steep shorelines will grow submerged vegetation and Secchi depths will determine how deep these plants will grow on the bottom. You should determine somehow what specific type of plants are now and will be growing in this lake especially the "reeds". Reeds this time of year (Fall) should be producing seed heads that are important in identification of reeds. Get some pictures and we can identify them. Nature will introduce some early invader species of water plants. Some of the first ones will probably be cattails and Chara. Winds and Waterfowl will deposit other seeds from their manure deposits.

Bottom dewatered vegetation growth I think will be primarily terrestrial plants that will when under water, they will die and contribute to the nutrient load in the pond. Accumulated nutrients will mostly determine the overall lake productivity.

It would be good to at least have an alkalinity measurement. Pet shop test kit would give a good idea of the concentration. I would never add lime to a lake/pond this big as it even in with low alkalinity will produce plenty of fish standing crop for most users. Alkalinity and basic nutrient tests will give a good indication of the fish poundage production ability in 13-14 acres.

This is enough until I get more water quality information.

Now would be the time to add vertical structure to the deep areas. Looks like it's going to be a nice lake.

You may still have LMB. Many fish kills only reduce the populations and don't kill all the fish.

Sounds like I just need to be patient.

As for my water temp. The pond has steep banks 3/4 of the way around and is constantly filled with cool water from rain and run-off. In Lexington we get rain almost every other day and the evenings always cool to below 70 even in the middle of summer. Both help the water temp.

We have a wildflower nursery just about an hr south of here where I have sourced a bunch of aquatic plants to populate a sewer wetlands system.

They have a ton of variety and a great place shop for such, not sure if they would ship dormant plants or not.

The actual name escapes me right now but I can find them if you would be interested, they are in central MO.

3 weeks of pumping. Some of that grass is in well over 3 feet of water, not sure how its still alive and standing. One more week and I'll start posting results.

I'll make sure and say a prayer for them. I wonder if five of them is enough to make a shawl out of? You wife might like that. LOL


Don't give up. Just feed the otters a high-velocity lead diet and they'll go away. :-D Then you'll have a nice LMB fishery.

On a side note, I have a 30-40lb beaver in the creek behind my house. My son and I see it nearly every day when we're down there fishing. It doesn't eat the fish but it has wreaked havoc with my willow trees. The little bugger seems to let them grown to about 20 feet and then in one night chews the things down. If I still lived in Idaho, I could make a beaver hat out of the thing but here in TN they're protected. I'm considering getting a bow and taking it fishing with me...............

There are still a few of us old timers around. Good luck with the project and ask any questions you like.

I will be happy to see my chestnuts exceed 20 ft...
So, no one wanted to guess the identity of the other seedlings?
Walnut would have been too easy, those pictured are Butternuts! (Also prone to disease )

Hi All,

I feel kind of strange doing this as a new/old member so I hope you don't mind. I've been a lurker for 20 years, a member since 2011, and now a sponsor of the site. My name is Terry Battisti and last week I launched a new web-based platform called PondStat. The platform provides pretty much everythig the pond owner needs with respect to pond management math and statistics. No more spreadsheets, no more hand calculations, etc. It even takes your data and places it all in easy to read tables as well as prints out graphs.

How does it work? First off we have 12 species of fish, at this time, and use their respective WS equations to calculate WR. You can track in time any combination of these fish as well as forage. Some of these fish can be entered as forage and predators, as with all the sunfish species and RBT.

At a minimum, you can enter a fish's length and weight, in either English units or metric units, and it will time stamp the data and calculate WR, AVG WR, put fish in size bins, track weather, water-quality data, tagged fish, culled/released fish, PSD, CPUE, #Fish Caught/angler*hr, Longest/Heaviest fish, and Shortest/Lightest fish.

The platform also allows for the tracking of feeders, feed rates, feed types, fertilization, forage stocking, predator stocking, and as mentioned above, tagged fish.

This is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

If any Pond Boss forum member would like a two week trial, I'd love to offer that up for free. And if you like it and want to subscribe, we're offering a 50% off coupon for the first year to pond owners.

Feel free to go check out the main site at PondStat. If you want more info, just hit me up here on this post and I'll gladly answer any questions you have. Below are some examples of the tables and graphs it produces. Thanks again for taking the time to read this post. I look forward to spending more time on here answering fishery math questions you may have.

Sincerely,

LOL Theo! We enginerds need to stick together. :-D Thank you for the warm welcome and along with you, I hope to add an engineering flare to Pond Boss. :-)

Terry

I like it when one of our bowhunters brings out 200-300 pounds of corn and dumps it in the cornfield for the deer.

Remember --- without having bass regularly eating pellets in "healthy happy water" you will only safely grow 50-60 lbs of bass per natural ACRE that is 30 lbs maybe and just maybe 40 lbs of LMB in 1/2 acre as primarily pellet fed bass. Pushing the natural limit more than 80 lbs of bass /ac can be grown per acre but this is a high risk situation for the longer term situation and numerous pond owners who have done this have had significant fish kills for learning what should not be done.

Do the math for a weight combination of sizes. For a 40 lbs/ac reference guideline this is 4 six lb'rs and maybe three to four 3 lb'rs as 12lbs, and a couple 2 lb'rs; all totaling 40 lbs and does not include the 12" (ea. 1lb) and smaller sizes of bass. Don't forget that Happy Water includes a good aeration system that could include both good bottom based aeration and an efficient surface aerator for use during low or marginal DO events. A short term low DO event in summer will kill your largest bass first. This is a very discouraging learning event when you have been working so hard for years to grow those biggest bass.


A 6 lb 21" LMB fast growing plump bass in 2026 will / should sometime in 2028 be 23'' and be around 8 lbs with 4 of them by themselves will total 32lbs.

It would be ideal IMO if ALL the bass in your pond were just fast growing females. This way you have a much better chance of all the bass in the pond being optimum sized fish.

Down the road, if you have a fish kill from too much carrying capacity and with just 1 unlucky hour of 'bad' water, you can use the above information for creating a new 1/2 acre fishery as an all female bass pond. Five 8 lb bass equals 40 bass lbs close to maximum for 1/2 acre of happy water.

By a standard food conversion ratio chart, for five 8 lb bass (40lbs) to stay at a standard weight body condition, they will or need to eat to total of 240 pounds of live food per year for all five to just stay at a healthy plump 8 lb. This as calculated by 'new' standard weight maintenance guidelines, that says a LMB needs to eat six lbs of live food for each pound it weighs to stay at maintenance weight to be able to grow. Then to grow to the next pound (usually 1") it needs another 8-10 lbs of more food/s per year.


Then - for all five 8 lb'rs to grow one additional pound to be 9 lbs,,, collectively the five 8 lbr's will need to eat another 80-90 more lbs of live foods for a grand total of around 280 - 290 lbs of live foods consumed in one year. Each 8lb bass per year eating 48 lbs maintenance + 8 to10 lbs each for growth to the next inch. For sure a BIG challenge in a 1/2 pond. Do you know how many pounds of forage fish that a 1/2 acre pond will grow or have when at carrying capacity? Supplemental foods are almost always needed in small ponds when trying to grow really best growth, big bass.

That could be awesome!!!

I would think the trolling motor battery would throw off the balance of the whole thing, but some kind of propulsion would be necessary.

[I started a new deer thread for this season, if you want to move it over.]

Personally, I have never heard of feeding cotton seeds.

Might be interesting to set up one feeder with cotton seeds and one with corn in the same area and set up cameras to observe the deer behavior with two food sources? Evaluate time-of-day, male versus female, seasonal food preference moving to late fall, etc.

Where is old Muleshoe when you need him !

If you have the space and resources, look into how natural swimming ponds are filtered through plants, substrate, and bog. That would go a long way to pre-filter your water and reduce nutrient loads for supporting unwanted plant life, while also helping the appearance of your pond.
I cannot be an inexpensive project, but IMHO should prevent needing to maintain water quality through chemical means. Worth the peace of mind though.

For catching fish that love pellets, use a Stubby Steve's or Berkley Power Egg for bait and chum with pellets.

Method courtesy of George Glazener.

I know a lot more about water treatment than ponds. I concur with much of the advice here. Iron only becomes soluble at high concentrations in the absence of oxygen. So this water will be devoid of oxygen, and it will consume some oxygen when oxidizing. Iron itself is not very toxic, but low oxygen concentrations will kill your fish. And the oxidized iron may make your pond ugly. Iron in water without oxygen is dissolved and the water is usually clear, as soon as it oxidizes the red iron precipitate forms making iron colored water you see.

How to treat it depends on iron concentration and pH. Oxidizing almost always works, cascading through gravel filled buckets as Fishin Rod suggested will work. However 70 to 80 gpm that may take a lot of buckets, and if you have much iron it could clog the buckets quickly Might be worth a try. Could you build a stream to feed the pond, with some drop and riffles that could work. But the red oxidized iron might look ugly. Spraying the well water into the air could also work, but the oxidized iron will end up in your pond. Not toxic, however if you have a lot of it you might not like the way the pond looks.

I have used greensand filters, it works a bit like a water softener. At your flow rates and if your iron concentrations are high it could get expensive and troublesome to operate. If your concentrations are low it could be fine.

Some people put aerators into their wells to oxidize the iron before pumping, but that will clog your well and/or pump. I don't think its a great idea.

Best of luck with it!

I'd guess a diffuser without adding anything else would work as well as with those products. Might try that first, before spending money.

I am going to have to "generalize" since I am not at your pond site, but what I say will probably be mostly true.

Usually the "muck" in a pond is decaying organic matter, and the "silt" in a pond is from particles that were transported into the pond by moving water, or even sometimes the air.

Both muck and silt can rob your pond of valuable depth.

Excellent job clearing out your muck. That is a good start!

Do you have a groundwater pond or a pond filled by surface run off?

If a run off pond, then most of your silt probably came in during heavy rain events. The most cost-effective solution for that problem is prevention. Do you have good ground cover throughout the watershed that drains into your pond? If not, improve it where you can.

Is there a plowed agricultural field that drains into your pond when rains hit that bare ground? If so, you could install a silt fence (ugly, but cheap) to slow the surface flows so the silt will drop out of the water flow and be stabilized in place by your groundcover. If that is too ugly, then perhaps you could put in a low berm that exactly follows a contour line on your property to achieve the same goal.

There is even a chance that much of your silt came in when the pond was initially constructed. There are a few horror stories on Pond Boss where someone finished their pond and immediately had a frog-strangler rain that eroded the banks and filled in 1-2 feet of silt on a single day.

Moving from prevention to cure, you can probably improve your pond by removing some or all of the existing silt. The hard-packed or solid base at the BOTTOM of the pond should not turn into soft silt as a result of your operations. However, there are two problems to be aware of. There is a chance that the solid base is a compacted clay liner to seal your pond. If you punch through that layer, or even just thin it enough, then your pond might start leaking. You can run equipment over that layer and even scrape and remove silt, but be very careful!

The second problem is the SIDES of your pond. For piled, loose materials there is a concept called "angle of repose". You have observed it when you see sand piles at construction sites, etc. When you start removing material from the base of the pile, the top of the pile will eventually have to collapse to re-establish a stable angle of repose.

I am mentioning this because as you remove silt, it may affect your submerged banks in the pond. If your sides are loose silt over a solid packed base, then you should be just fine clearing the silt. If you have loose silt over barely compacted silt, then you may have some slumps around your pond edges after your project due to wave action loosening up your newly exposed "base". If that is the case, then your best solutions are keep the pond full as much as possible, and plant some beneficial submerged plants at your pond edges to stabilize the slope.

Finally, everything I said above may not be applicable, if you have a groundwater pond that feeds through a layer of unconsolidated (loose) sand and gravel. I tried to deepen one of my groundwater ponds two summers ago during the drought. After I got through the muck, I discovered a sand layer that was two feet thick. I kept stepping back the excavator from that exposed layer and tried to deepen the pond. Instead, the water-saturated sand just flowed right into any hole I excavated. I finally had to move back about 40 feet to where there was a big, natural clay plug. I excavated out the center portion of that plug about 8' deep and was able to make steep sides. The reason for that story is that if you have a groundwater pond, you may be able to deepen your pond in some areas and not be able to remove silt in other areas.

The above was all theoretical, now to the more practical. Can you easily drain your pond, and then soon have enough water that it re-fills? If so, that is the best situation for removing silt. Do you own (or rent) equipment for that task? With very little practice, you can scrape exactly the depth you want with a mini-excavator or back hoe.

If none of that is feasible, then you might even be able to try a "poor boy" solution. If you laid out a strip of landscape fabric and hand-placed concrete pavers on that, you might be able to easily create some wading sections where you desire. I would just purchase the cheapest pavers you can find, since you will never see them. I would go with the largest size possible that you can easily manipulate by hand. If 16x24 pavers give you panic when your head goes underwater on the deeper portions, then definitely go to a smaller size.

Good luck on your pond project! If you list the goals for your pond, you can probably get some additional advice on ways to achieve those goals.

Looks like the white folks downrown.

Here's the link to the RW ARchive thread

Yes, if the potential pond is already choked with vegetation, it could indicate several factors such as abundance or overload of nutrients (fertilizer, goose poop, fish waste, excess pellet feed, etc) or very shallow water by design or influx of silt/sediment.

Whatever causes the 'excess' vegetation, it's not such an easy thing to correct.