We moved to our large acreage 30 years ago and the only thing it lacked was a reliable pond. There is a pond dam for about a 1/10 acre pond that drains roughly 15-20 acres of grassland, but nearly every summer it is dry except for a few weeks. One problem is that there is a brown sandstone type rock in the immediate area and also some glacial till. Also I didn't keep up with the trees around the pond site and now there are a couple of dozen 30 year old cottonwoods plus a few of other species. Cutting them down will be one of my major projects this winter. Or if I get inpatient, hire a contractor to come in to get rid of them.
This past summer was one of the wettest on record for our area. Instead of being dry except for a few weeks, the pond had water in it except for a few weeks. A nearby creek was also running good all summer, and the better it runs it seems like the more likely the pond will have some water in it. Full depth to the overflow is maybe 8 feet but the pond loses water pretty fast down to the ring of cottonwoods at about 4 foot of depth. The banks are not eroded, there is a sediment pond uphill, and the bottom does not have a lot of sediment load in it.
I'm not expecting to ever have a fishing pond, but am willing to experiment with SoilFloc to see if it can keep several feet of water in it most years. Depending on how much chainsaw work I do there this winter, the plan is to throw in some SoilFloc from shore this Spring when it's at the 4 foot depth, then followup with another application from shore when it's closer to the overflow depth.
