CB, the older version of this 1/4 acre pond had a sediment pond before the redo, but it had washed out many, many years prior. Best I can tell, my pond has a 20+ acre watershed that would suit a 2 acre pond. Aside from not wanting to afford another pond build at this time, a sediment pond of equal size (1/4 acre) would still not solve any throughput problems...at least not noticeable.

Rod, The dam of this little pond has 2 foot of freeboard, but has no way of holding back extra water. The drain pipe is a 15 inch pipe through the dam. The water level raised over the pipe this last weekend enough to cover the inlet entirely. My fear would be that if I could hold extra water back and another unexpected rain would come it would then flow over the emergency spillway...not good IMO. Besides that, the pond is built in a steep walled ravine and has little to no room to spread out. The main purpose of this pond is to act as a catch basin that keeps my front yard from flash flooding. It does a great job at that...putting fish in it is just like making lemon-aid when given lemons. I have only seen it go over the dam once in 9 years and that was before renovation and the added freeboard. Prior to renovation, it was not uncommon to have 6 inches of water (20 feet wide) between the house and the shop during flash flood season. The most I have seen the pond drop below full pool is about 10 inches. It holds its water very well.

The pros that I have noodled in my head which could be good or bad, depending, are...

1.) Springtime refreshing of the water in the BOW.
2.) It could carry excess smaller fish out should the pond have overpopulation problems (which is currently the opposite with respect to forage).
3.) The large amounts of watershed water that flows in has very little time to drop-out and is bound to carry some nutrients out with it. This relates with item #1 really...I'm just struggling to come up with more possible pros. The pond has struggled with heavy blooms for the last couple years.

cons...

1.) Increased silting.
2.) Possible drastic temperature/chemistry change that could cause fish stress/kill.
3.) Higher chance of emergency overflow use.

So far, when the high volumes of water come in (early spring mostly), the pond temps are very close to the rain water temps and a temp change is minimal.

Fish on!,
Noel