Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Shallow ponds?

I am simply amazed at some of the depths that people have in their ponds. I see where some of these ponds are 20' deep or even more. I'm in Calvert County Maryland. This is a lowland county on the Chesapeake Bay. The highest elevations here are just over 100' above sea level. All the ponds here, mostly what you would call farm ponds, seem to be shallow. I have fished many ponds around here over the years and honestly the deepest ones only seem to be about 5' deep. Most of these ponds are from 1 to 7 acres in surface area.

Is standing on the dam and judging the drop off from the pond level to the creek that it drains into an accurate way to get an estimate of the depth? Also most of these ponds are 50 years old and surrounded by trees, so would they have silted in, and leaves falling in over the years, make them even more shallow than they look?

I know that in these ponds if you fish a floating crankbait that dives to 5' it will hit bottom. And a plastic worm on a 1/16 sinker will sink to the bottom in about 4 seconds. And this is at the deep end by the dam.

I also know that these shallow ponds can produce big LMB. The last 2 state records, both over 11 lbs, came from ponds here, just like mine, in the same county. And this is with no management at all, just very light recreational fishing. I know of another pond that is only 1/2 acre and only about 3' deep at the dam, that produced a 9-12 that wasn't weighed in until the next day.

Anyhow, Is my 4 acre pond that is only 5' deep considered shallow? Do any of you have similar shallow ponds?

Hey, MSC, yep, that's a shallow pond. However, I have a half acre pond that is the same way. My deepest area is 5-6" but the average depth is probably much closer to 3-4'. It's certainly not an ideal setup and is typically going to require a lot of management for unwanted vegetation growth, but they can also obviously be good producers fish-wise. You do need to be more aware of winter kill possibilities in shallow ponds.

I have some pretty nice BG in my shallow pond and have caught some decent LMB, though nothing anyone would consider to be a trophy. Deeper ponds seem to offer a lot of advantages in terms of things like vegetation and ability to hold more total fish mass, but certainly they have their own challenges.

I also have a 1.5 acre pond that was about 18-20' deep till muskrats and trees on the dam emptied about half of it. Still, being a bit deeper than the other one, it doesn't have nearly the same vegetation issues. Virtually no FA growth there, ever, gets a few nice blooms each year of good algae, and stays pretty consistent. I do have a big curly leaf pondweed problem in that one, though, that locks it up for a couple of months each year.

Long and short - in my opinion - if you actively manage your pond and it generally does the things you want it to do, you are successful.

There's no way to judge a pond depth without probing the water. Either from a boat or using a slip bobber and a heavy weight. Keep casting to different areas and adjusting the depth of the weight until the bobber just floats. Measure the bobber to weight distance and that's a close approximation of the depth.

Todd, thanks for that info. I guess I'm lucky because my pond has mostly steep banks that quickly drop off to 3'. Because of this I believe, I don't get FA in the pond. I do have a smaller 1/2 acre pond on the same farm that does get a small amount of FA around the edges. However I have seen a couple ponds around here that get FA totally covering the surface during the summer. It looks terrible.

As for winterkill, I am way down in Southern Maryland, far from WV. We don't have anywhere near the harsh winters that you have there. We have cypress trees around here and we grow tobacco. That's how far south I am. We very rarely have ice thick enough to walk on.

Esshup, Thanks for the slip bobber idea. This spring when I trap the snapping turtles, I will be in the pond probing, and get an accurate feel of the bottom.