Hello Everyone,

My name is Ryan Dunn, and I'm the proud/daunted owner of a new (old) dugout pond in Northern Illinois. Full disclosure, I made this introduction over on the the Garden Pond Forum and was (very politely) redirected to you guys here, who may have even more expertise with larger ponds.

I look forward to digging into the weeds (sorry) in an effort to learn as much as I can about restoring and maintaining the pond I inherited last November. As winter washes through I'm getting excited/anxious/terrified about what I have ahead of me. Here are some details, though I don't know much of what they mean right now outside of guesses of logic…

- My pond has an upstream slough which sits at the base of a freight railroad line
- Its outflow runs in a gulley, through a drain under our road, and across to a larger lake
- I also spotted a drain out of the pond which is about five feet below pond level
- I inherited an aeration/fountain from the previous owner, who was not using it recently
- The pond last fall was covered in duckweed/algae
- I don't know the depths, or the best way to obtain them
- The water seems relatively clear, though the bottom seems quite mucky
- Seems like many years of leaf and plant fall created a fertile environment for the bad stuff
- I skimmed a little bit this past weekend and saw a bunch of small green sunfish, is that a bad sign?
- Last fall the pond was TEEMING with frogs. Good or bad, I don't know what is a good balance?

Some of my goals…

- Take stock of my pond, what's in it, etc.
- Learn how to maintain the pond, inflow, outflow, etc.
- On that note, learn the do's and dont's of maintaining
- Discover how this pond actually works
- Improve what I can, maintain what is working
- Learn the potential dangers/pitfalls/etc.
- Get some great ideas on what to do with it in the future

Any insights, or just "it will be ok" type replies would be appreciated. I've included a handful of images that will help you all see what I've inherited.

Thanks in advance everyone.

…ryan

Welcome to PB Ryan! You have a nice layout.

A couple pieces of advise to get your thread started...

A row boat and a rock tied to a string is a good way to determine pond depths. Tie knots in the string every foot. The more time you spend in the boat taking readings, the more you know your pond. map it out on paper. My old 1/4 acre pond was easy to map with the row boat...2 foot deep all the way across. It was time for de-mucking. If a boat is hard to come by, a fishing pole with bobber and weight can be used. Set the weight at 4 foot below the bobber, for example, and cast and reel in slowly until the weight hits bottom. This takes a bit of practice to feel and see when this happens, but will yield decent results. Change the bobber to weight distance until you have mapped the whole pond.

Traps, nets, and fishing poles are good tools to see what's in the pond. Keep records of type, weight, & length.

Identify your plant life. If you have duckweed...you have a chore ahead of you and may have too much nutrients in the pond/slough. I'll leave this topic for the more experienced members.

Thanks for the great tip on getting depths. My father-in-law wanted to come over with his depth finder and lay it on the ice this past winter but NE Illinois got a lot of snowfall which made that a non-starter. I definitely had duckweed last year, and there is definitely a lot of leaf and stemfall in this pond.

What was your de-mucking process/strategy? I am feeling confident that this will be a part of my restoration program regardless. Would be to good to know the when's and how's for that task if you have any great wisdom to impart from your experience!

We have 5 acres and the previous owner was a master gardener, so I have inherited some nice composting stations, and areas of land to store stuff if that helps.

Thanks again for the reply

Welcome to PB.

You will get better answers re: demucking strategy if you can determine how much muck needs to be removed.
Wade out into the pond with a 10' joint of 3/4" PVC pipe and do some probing. You'll figure out pretty quickly
how thick the muck layer is. Come back with that and you should get some good suggestions.

Aeration/circulation can help reduce the muck layer, but it isn't a fast process. Instant gratification requires the
use of large machines and parting with what can amount to substantial amounts of money.

The simple version of renovating my pond is...

Hired a guy to....

1.) Cut the dam with a mini excavator so that as much water could drain as possible. He got most of it. IIRC he did this in May.
2.) Waited until October when he came back with a track loader and cut the dam even wider from the back side. Waiting allowed for the soupy snot to dry out somewhat. Cutting the opening in the dam wider allowed him to pass in and out of the pond with scoops of muck. This stuff was like pudding, but smelled like sin.
3.) He worked on this back-and-forth, and up-and-over-the-top ordeal for many days until all 8 foot of the pudding was removed. Most of which was stock piled on the back side of the dam while what would not fit there got spread out in the neighboring field to dry further.
4.) Somewhere towards the end of the muck hauling, he put the dam back with the clay and rock that was removed from the cut. Some had washed out during the draining process so he scraped up some off the bottom to finish off the dam. My pond sits in all clay sub soils. The dam was put back together so that he could fill in the back side with some of the remaining muck to make it look even from the back side. Most will recommend compacting this loose clay, but my guy just ran over it where he could and tamped with the bucket...far from ideal, but the dam has not sunken in at all and it holds water very well...I got very lucky compared to some.
5) Then I waited until May for the crazy thing to fill back up.

You would need to look at the slough too. Something like that could be modified and used in many ways to help keep the yard pond happy. Drop out sediment pond/forage pond...I wish I had one!

Wow great details and thanks for sharing these steps. Seems like (if I were to go this route) I may have a slightly different process, given that it's a dugout pond without a dam, with the inflow and outflow? The only bummer about the slough is that it's mostly on the neighbor's property, and apparently there has been some sensitivty with "collaborating" in the past. They seem to think they have a pond and not a slough lol.

Is there much that needs to be done upstream to achieve what you're mentioning about drop out sediment / forage? Are there effective ways to filter my inflow stream to further restrict anything coming in that I don't want?

I recently read Tim Matson's Earth Pond book. Aside from being one of the more readable writers I've encountered, I loved his plainspeak information (as much of it as I understood). The "sand drop" sounded great until winter rolled around and my pond had two feet of snow on it from December to March. Nature always wins I guess.

…ryan

You likely already know this, Ryan, but a pond teeming with frogs and lots of small green sunfish probably has few if any bass or other large fishy predators.

@anthropic - I had a feeling! I was told the cranes had traditionally devoured the fry when the previous owner had stocked it. She gave up after that. Any tips/pointers/suggestions on stocking strategies/species I'm all ears.

Thanks.

…ryan

liftingfaces,

Do you have rock at your place or a cheap local source? One idea for the slough is to put some gabion baskets (wire cages packed with stones) between your nice pond and the slough.

It will NOT change the water level in either location, so the neighbor can stay happy with his current "pond". However, it will slow down the flow of water into your pond after rain events. This will keep out some of the silt, some of the vegetation, and some of the fry of undesirable fish.

It will not be a perfect solution to any of those problems, but it could be a 90% solution.

P.S. Your gabion baskets cannot be allowed to act as a dam during big rain events and back up water onto a neighbor, such that they could sue you for damages. Their use depends on the size of the watershed above the slough, the topography, etc.

Good luck on your project!

Rod

Hi, Ryan. I'm very new to all of this as well so I can't really contribute anything toward answering your questions, but I wanted to say that I love the shape of your pond. You've got a great looking piece of property there.

@FishinRod - Thanks for the idea for the gabions. I had read that bales of hay had some effect as well. In your proposed scenario, are you saying I'd have to go out and remove them any time there's a heavy rain? That might become a bit of an issue if I were away during a storm, say. I really like the idea of what they could achieve though, so perhaps I read you wrong.

@ChrisIN3D - I took a peek at your intro and it sounds like you have a pretty sweet setup yourself. Thanks for the compliments on my place. I am really excited to take on the stewardship and continue on the right trajectory.

Thanks again.

…ryan

I can't tell from your photos, but is there a small dam or obstruction between the slough and your pond? If so, how much higher is the water level in the slough compared to your pond.

The hay bales would make a small dam.

The gabion baskets are permeable, meaning the water level will equalize on both sides - given enough time. (You DEFINITELY don't want to move them after they are in place.)

For example, if you put 3' baskets across the top of your dam location, then a 1" rain might raise the water level in the slough by 2.5'. Depending on how you packed the rocks, the water would then slowly drain into your pond (over the next day?). At that point, your pond would be at normal pool level, as would the slough for its normal level. Slowing the high water flow events will somewhat help your fish NOT wash out of your pond, and keep some of the crap in the slough from washing in.

A 5" rain would raise the water level in the slough by 6' (or whatever) and would overtop the gabion baskets. They would not help in a huge rain event, but would help for many of the normal rain events if sized correctly.

Hope that just gives you a few more ideas on having some control of the water flows into and out of your pond. You can then focus on pond management for algae control, fish populations, etc.

My pond is about 3’ below the slough. The outlet of the slough is presently on my neighbor’s property, however. Not sure what sort of challenge that poses or if any workaround exists.

Photos for reference (forum attachment was giving me grief)...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/e0ryvrsikfy1xs3/IMG_5416.jpg

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jkyo4twfeaymh5l/IMG_5417.jpg

Note: This GIS has the property line too far south. It should split JUST to the south of my pond’s southern shore.

...ryan

A 3' drop from the slough to your pond is perfect.

Start evaluating and managing your pond. If something undesirable is coming in from the slough you will then have some options.

You could put in a gabion basket or a little sediment settling pond just across the inflow from that big willow(?) tree. You could probably make that look good and fit in with the existing beautiful views at your place.