Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - In the middle of a pond renovation, Indiana

I wanted a better clean swimming pond. I decided to pump my 1 acre pond, remove the muck/fish, the pond is only 23 years old. I w[img]http://[/img]ould like fresher clearer water. The far side of the pond is only 6ft deep, they are going to dig channels for the future muck to slide into. By the deck it's 18ft to 12 ft deep. The sides of the pond are going to be scraped of muck and lined with limestone all the way to the bottom. The beach pebble rock is going to be removed and replaced with beach pebble rock. I plan to add minnow, then 50 hybrid blue gill. Any thoughts? criticism welcome. [img]http://[/img]

beautiful place there!
There will always be future muck even if it slides into a corner of the pond. Do you use aeration from the bottom? A bottom aeration plus even consider a beach area water cannon to do horizontal water movement that sweeps from side to side will keep your beach area very clean and beautiful. Adding some horizonatal aeration is very cheap compared to the cost of pumping and mucking out a 1 acre pond!

Limestone on the sides can be covered in muck or sink and bury itself if you don't have moving water to keep it washed clean.

Beach gravel stays on top better if you have a liner of some type under it that again keeps a separation between mud and stone

HBG would not be my first choice due to the fact that they are aggressive biters of swimmers and because they reproduce and give even more aggressive green sunfish. If you had to have panfish, you would have to have bass or some other predator to control your HGB and keep things in balance.

If you want something fun for kids to catch and that are good to eat, consider your forage base, various minnow types, shiners are probably better than fatheads, then add YP as the fun to catch, great to eat fish. Later you can control numbers by taking out their eggs each year or could add a few walleye for the top predator.