Like some others that have been discussed here recently, my pond has quite a bit of bushy pond weed this summer.
I was leaving it alone because it wasn't taking over, it provides fantastic habitat for lots of low on the food chain critters, and shades the shallow areas from the blistering summer sun.
Since the muskrats showed up it has become a major nuisance. Those varmints have torn a mountain of it loose and it was floating all over the pond. Not really a big deal, but the pond is our swimming hole and the girls aren't real hip on swimming in seaweed, so I spent some time yesterday cleaning it up.
I used the 12' v-bottom boat and borrowed one of the plastic rake/shovel gizmos the girls use to pick up horse poop in the barn. That thing worked really well to collect the BPW. I pulled out four loads of the stuff, which was pretty much all of it that was free-floating. Had to put the boat back on the trailer, pull it out and drain the water between each load.
Found one ~4" western painted turtle that was recently dead, and two smaller ones that were alive and extremely upset with me for dumping them into the boat. Couldn't begin to count the numbers of PK shrimp, fry fish, tadpoles, and other wiggly things that were hiding in the stuff.
Pond looked a lot better this morning. Current from overnight aeration caused almost all of the loose stuff that I missed to pile up against the dock, and I was able to stand on the dock and get that with the poop collector gizmo.
