Question from RStringer was: " Why is this not going to be a good place for bluegill and bass?"

My comment was - "In this type of pond it will be a real challenge to get regular pond fish such as bluegill and bass to live in it year round especially after 5-8+ years". Number one is I did not state it is not a good place for BG and LMB. I said it will be a challenge. Number 2 was "to live in it year round". It will be a challenge because of the excess tree liter that is in a pond. The challenge becomes directly related to the amount of tree liter that enters, sinks and decomposes. Decomposition of organic material consumes dissolved oxygen (DO). The more organics trying to decompose the more oxygen that is consumed. Both are closely related. Dissolved oxygen is absolutely needed for survival of BG and LMB. They require around 3ppm or 3mg/L of DO in the water. Some fish can survive in lower DO such as 1-2ppm compared to other fish. BG & LMB are not in the low DO requirement range.

Woodland ponds are normally shallow. Shallow and small pond means less average water depth. PLF is digging or has dug this pond with a small tractor that IMO means relatively shallow pond. Less water depth means less average pond volume and a high surface to volume ratio means less DO that is available even on the best day compared to a deeper pond.

Sunshine and plant photosynthesis it how ponds generate their biggest amount or percent of DO into their 'bank account'. Large amounts of organics in a shallow pond with a high surface to volume ratio means that during several days of cloudy days very little if any DO is produced above the total required for all pond respiration. DO production is then a lot less than DO demand and after several days of no sunshine,,,,, DO loss is significantly more than production and this equals DO starvation to critters that need DO to survive. Suffocation happens pretty quickly.

The pond appears to be too far from electric for any artificial aeration that can add some DO. In a wooded area such as in this thread, this pretty much rules out windmill and solar aeration. In these types of ponds during extended cloudy days, even aeration is not enough at times to prevent large DO losses when large amounts of muck sludge and organics are on the bottom. Overall bacterial decomposition and respiration oxygen demand is a lot greater than that needed by fish. Thus as the pond ages and years and years of annual high amounts of organic tree litter continue to accumulate, significant DO sag periods to less than 3ppm will occur and will become more frequent as time passes. This DO problem will probably be noticed first during winter. Large DO sags in shallow woodland ponds will most likely first occur in winter when snow cover, lack of sunshine into the water during cloudy days will result in large DO losses to create the common 'winterkill' problem for BG, LMB and most other fish. I know of no fish that can survive very long in 0 DO.