Hello all! Ive really enjoyed reading all the various posts on here....great stuff!

I just completed building a pond with a friend of mine. Its about .6 of an acre and about 10-12' deep at the deepest trench down the center.
The pond was dug with a pan drag behind a tractor and we cut in a 3' shelf around half of it and put rip rap on the shelf.
Mostly reddish brown clay, actually so thick we had to take the cutting blade off the pan and switch to teeth because it was packed in so tight it stopped our massive john deere in its tracks. We dug a deeper cut trench at the bottom with an excavator and got into a little of the more gold/yellow clay with some boulders mixed in.

We havent had any decent rain since we have dug the pond and my question mainly is around knowing what our next steps should be?
We are going to fill it with a well and have a fountain in it (residential pond), we dug a 12' deep trench off the side and put in a 22" well casing and backfilled with gravel....we plan to irrigate off the well casing that filters through the 15 foot of gravel trench and reaches pumps that are easy to access via a lid on the casing behind the dam (dam was made of pond clay we took up during the excavation with the pan).

What would the experts on here do at this point? Start filling and see if it holds? Wait for some big rains? Put down bentonite or some other "sealer" as a base while its dry? Just curious what the next ideal steps would be. Budget it a factor, dont have a ton of money to throw at it.

Thanks in advance! Sorry if some of these questions are redundant.

Jake