Russ you ask - "The pond is not sheltered by trees and has a substantial "fetch" regardless of wind direction."
Not sure what part you don't understand but I assume the word fetch is the 'problem'. In detail, this means there are few if any trees around the pond to inhibit wind action. Substantial "fetch" means that the pond is large enough or oriented in a direction that the wind can blow across a large area of the pond to create "substantial" or good wave action. Substantial is relative and a personal opinion. One man's substantial is maybe another's 'moderate'. IMO a wind should generate whitecaps before one considers it substantial wave action. Breaking white cap waves tend to mix water deeper than rolling or gravity waves. The water temperature and degree of stratification and wave height have a lot to do with how deep the waves can mix the water.
Fetch by definition is the distance over which the wind can blow uninterrupted by land.
To elaborate a little more on what Bill said. The pond is located in the very flat, and open Arkansas delta. The nearest group of trees large enough to block wind is 3 miles to the north and almost non-existant to the south. In the dead heat of summer it is rare to see the pond without a ripple for an entire day. White capping wave action poses a severe errosion problem around our levee. So much so that we placed 75 tons of rip rap around the edge this summer.
