We drained our pond two years ago, finished digging it out and repaired the dam late last summer. It still has about two vertical feet left until it's completely full. We've put a lot of time into it and it seems like we have so much more to do in order to get everything where we want it.
We put aeration in two weekends ago and stocked it last weekend. Those were two big exciting steps for us and I finally feel like we are getting over the hump. My wife and I both had some anxiety once we first cut the dam and drained it. We had a huge 2+ acre mudhole in our yard and I wasn't sure if and when we'd get a full pond back or how much it would be improved.
We have rain coming over the next week, hopefully enough to finish filling it and then we will get to see if our spillway will keep it drained down from filling over the dock. We aren't sure and it looks like it's going to be close. Before the redo, it would keep it just a couple of inches below the dock. It was perfect. We don't have an overflow pipe. The pond has only drained through the spillway and never eroded for all the years we owned it so we kept it that way. I seeded it last year and have some grass growth, hopefully it's enough to hold the soil. It was awesomely thick before which held the ground well. It's wide and the flow tends to be spread out but the pond hasn't had overflow just yet and we're a bit nervous about how it's going to work for us this time around.
Yesterday I spread straw and seed across our far bank. It's pretty much clay and gravel and I'm hoping this is going to work. We did well late last year getting the dam, the two flow areas into the pond and the spillway seeded and growing. The bank adjacent to the lawn kept itself green for us.
Anyways, so many things I want to get done and others I need to get done, plus too much stuff not pond related to do. We'll see what we get but every item off the checklist is another small reward.
