Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? Help Getting Started

Hello Folks,

My first post.

I recently aquired a small piece of property which includes an old farm pond. It's .96 acres when full. Currently, it's down about 18-24" from full. I think I have about 6-10 acres of runoff slope.

The dam has both large and small trees on and around it. It was not built with an overflow system. I do suspect a leak as I had water running below it recently despite a pretty bad drought these past 4 months.

I've seen old satellite photos from the 80's to now and the pond was there, always full. Currently, my max depth is 6-8' at the middle of the dam but most of the pond is 2-4' deep. ( it is 18-24" low ). There are no know fish but I do have a couple of muskrats I'll need to deal with. I have a small cattail growth at the far end from the dam

I would like to have the pond hold water and fish. I had an Excavator / Pond Builder come out to take a look. He said the trees must go for sure. Then, I had two options. One, He could rework the dam, look for and attempt to fix any leaks, build the dam up higher and see what happens when the spring rain falls. Two, he could do all of option one and bring out a dredge which would be very expensive ( like new pond build expensive ).

I guess other options would be to do nothing or destroy the dam and start fresh.

Any thoughts from the crowd? I want a place to fish with my Grandkids but at some point, I can just go to the lake.

Thanks in advance. I did cruise the archives but could'nt draw any conclisions on my situation.