I have hoped that someone would come up with an ingenious solution to the need to scoop leaves out quickly and easily before they sink.
Managing floating ropes that have some type of capturing device near the surface works, but is mostly a 2 person operation and if you get too long of a rope you would need a tractor to pull the loaded rope with wet heavy leaves in.
A mesh cover over the whole pond would not be good for me as I like the surface open for aeration, for my turtles, and for my minnows to feed off the surface.
To me it would be easiest if I had a powered solution. An old jet ski that floats well enough that the operator doesn't get wet but can push a skimmer basket on the front to push the leaves up on the shore. A way to tip/dump the basket once beached on the shore would be idea. Just 'mow lanes' across the surface whenever leaves are starting to float. If the skimmer rides about 6" under the surface you would get them all.
A manual process could be done with 2 people. You could make a similar wide and shallow basket that rides bout 6" under the water but also has a portion above the water with floats to help suspend the leaves as they are netted. It could be pulled back and forth across the pond. One person could attach it to the middle of a very long rope, pull it across the pond, empty it out, turn it around, leave it ready for the return trip, then walk around the pond, grab the long other end of the rope and pull it back across, etc.
I'm thinking a PVC rectangle frame, 3/4" pvc, maybe 8'-10' long, 24-30" wide. Make 2 identical frames and mount them one on top of the other with maybe 10" vertical PVC posts in the 4 corners. You could use any mesh that is strong enough to handle sticks and leaves dragging in it, maybe reuse an old seine net section. Cover the bottom, the two short sides and the back side, keeping the top open and the front entrance open between the frames. Let the bottom frame sink in the water as the floor of the 'skimmer' and wrap the top frame with pool noodles to keep it floating.
Probably best to scale it down and do a smaller test model first?
The same setup, but this time weighted by drilling holes in the pvc frame and filling the tubes with pea gravel might work well to drag muck off the bottom if pulled across with a garden tractor. You probably could use the same setup for both, you just would have to add pea gravel and take off floats during spring and summer season and empty gravel and add floats during fall season.
