Brian,
I may or may not put in the electric fence this spring. It depends on my budget and since I don't even have enough money saved to put in my two ponds at the moment, and the expensive of all the fish I want to purchase, It may not happen.
My alternative that worked well for me last year except on the pier, was to drive posts around the pond in the shallow water up to water too deep for the heron to wade and string them with monofiliment fishing line. I would run the line above the water enough so they cannot step over it, and run at least three strands about a foot apart. The posts were simply wooden stakes with screws to wrap the line around driven in (the screws) with a screw gun.
However an electric fence should work just fine and would be fairly simple to install. The only problem I would have would be grass contacting it, but I have heard of somehow making it so when the grass makes contact it burns off or something.
I have an article somewhere on installing electric fences,
but it may take awhile to find it. You should be able to find something on the net if you do a word search for electric fence on ponds or something. I found one site that sold them for koi ponds.
