Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? Overgrown pond rehab

Have recently purchased acreage with an overgrown 1/3 acre pond. Seeking to find experienced pond excavator serving eastern Missouri to remove 3’ to 4’ feet of silt and repair leaky spillway. Pond never dries but has significant small tree/shrub growth. May want to expand.

Would appreciate any guidance on finding appropriate type of excavator(s) to quote this work in our area.

Thanks for any assistance.

Be very careful. A lot of dirt movers claim to be pond builders but are not. Great that you are asking here and best of luck!

Sorry, no good advice on contractors.

However, going into the hottest part of summer, now would be a good time to drain the pond as much as possible. Maybe dig a small sump in the deepest part and drain that every few days - if it keeps refilling?

Whatever work you get the contractor to perform, doing it with drier material will only save YOU time and money.

Special thanks to TJ Hudson for the deep dive into pond rehabilitation, technical considerations and realistic goal setting. I appreciate the guidance and experiences shared as we undertake this project.

I'd drain it completely first and then build it back to your liking. To each his own but that's what worked fantastically for me.

I stubbornly tried to avoid doing that with my own lake for too long, but we finally cut the dam and let it dry for a year. I wished I would have done it sooner to tackle our problems with it. The access that the dried lake allowed was priceless. I was able to rebuild our dock, and strategically build and place fish structure. The entire banks were scraped of brushed and landscaped so that we could maintain a mowable, lawn quality area around it. I can now easily stop any willow and cattail growth as soon as they emerge.

We also restocked it to our liking and are managing those fish. After fishing today, I couldn't ask for a better mess of fish at this point. I am amazed at how large they've all grown in such a short time (except the redear) and how fat, colorful and overall healthy they look as compared to the fish before we undertook our rebuild.

Draining the lake made it so much easier to work with and recovery came about far quicker than I had anticipated.

Thank you for describing your experience. Sounds like good strategy.

Well done SherWood