I have a 1.25 acre pond in North Carolina that’s been neglected for many years and is in major need of muck and vegetation removal. I’ve attempted multiple DIY types of things with zero success. I don’t have thousands of dollars to spend for a complete dredging and renovation. What are my options??
by Cultural-Wasabi137
44 Comments
Can you describe your desired your desired outcome from this? A pond for recreational fishing? Or are you intending to do some aquaculture or?
How is it fed/filled?
First step is stopping water from flowing in. Then you can drain it.
Dig a ditch to drain it down. Let it dry. Remove muck. Plug drain. Re-fill.
All of this takes heavy equipment and a good operator.
It looks gorgeous to me honestly
In the same boat so making a comment to give traction. Otherwise drain using large pvc piping and then remove layers as water drains
Did you try muck-away? Did you have any results with that?
So you want to know how you can cheaply completely destroy this Marsh, and wild animal habitat. Make it go away? Don’t forget you need to get rid of the trees on the banks too. Then add a beach.
Do you have a day job as a developer?
What’s wrong with it? It looks exactly how it’s supposed to?
The vegetation is your friend and I encourage you to add more species. As for the muck, look into diffuser aeration
Is this a rage bait post? If not, I feel like you shouldn’t own this pond
“plant life and habitat structures”
Fixed it for you
All yall saying pour chemicals! Drain it! Dig it out! Aren’t real homesteaders. That pond is keeping the surrounding plants and wildlife thriving. I bet there are more fish there than you know.
If you just want to destroy everything to make it magazine “pretty” and only useful for one thing go back to the suburbs. You’ll be closer to Home Depot where they sell all the toxic chemicals you want to put in there. You can buy fish to put in it and catch so you can cosplay as a fisherman, too.
So let me get this straight you have a healthy pond that is low maintenance. Now you want to remove the things that keep the pond healthy naturaly, thereby turning that thing into a higher maintenance pond but you also don’t have a few thousand to do the plant removal?
So let me ask you: If currently you don’t want to spend money on the pond what would you do if for some reason everything in it dies because the ecosystem was disrupted too much?
create two more ponds. I’ve seen don tipping’s farm in Siskiyou Oregon & he uses a 5 pond system. this could make it manageable and useful. when you move water you will naturally see more plant growth to keep things cleaner. try researching natural pools to get an idea of maintaining a really clean pond lol. to get the pond looking like it did when you were a kid, means putting in effort to an ecological solution. all this pollution and ecosystem degradation in the world has unfortunately ruined so many water sources. best of luck.
What do you want it to look like, the neon blue lakes at the golf course?
Looks like a healthy well established pond to me.
Why change it?
If you want it deeper, derge it a bit. But don’t disturb the Islands.
Plant a pussy Willow or something on the islands! Or some other swamp tree. Would look good
Are you wanting a dredge or getting near surface vegetation off? A dredge is going to be a significant undertaking that can either be costly or time consuming. Surface skims can be done with something like scaffolding netting tied to floats, thrown and pulled across the surface of the pond.
My main suggestion is to get in there, get dirty.. if youre going to dredge by hand figure out what you’re doing with the materials before you start removing them. Its going to smell, bad so when you have a massive pile with no plan you’ll end up with a big smelly pile.
Ive some some success with home made 5 gal bucket conveyor systems for moving material but still requires people getting muddy
Gorgeous! Incredible diversity and nice wildlife habitat
Not sure what you’re fishing for, but generally fish like the vegetation and structure. Don’t rip it out, it’ll take years to recover and the fishing will be absolute shit in the meantime.
Respect the water and the fish – tailor your rig to the conditions you’re fishing in. For bass, you should be running pegged Texas rigs, flipping/punch jigs, topwater frogs/poppers/plastics/chatterbaits, snakebite rigs, etc.
For crappie (who LOVE deep weed beds), still think weedless. Weedless jig heads with plastics (weighted tube jigs are great), heavy slip-bobber rigs, etc.
“Neglected” is a short word for not understanding the environmental services this pond provides. Stop making nature answer what it can do for you to be worthy of existing.
Same.
First, aeration and water movement. We sunk two aerators off two lines from a Vevor pump we have in a building. Requires electric. But pex tubing and weighted tubing is cheap. I have not found a solar 12v pump option for this. Solar, about 4 panels at 100w into a battery pack and converter to plug a pump…no idea. I have searched far and wide. The best option was pump close to electric, and tubes down to aerator. People here are going to tell you about friction and tube length; and that’s fine. As I sit here I’m watching two aerators working very well on about 200’ weighted pex pipe.
Second, work. Endless, non-ceasing work. Clear it out. Educate yourself on the good the bad the invasive and ugly and get out on pond continually removing the bad and invasive. I do this when fields are too wet to cut.
Third, you said spring fed…do you know this or prior owner/realtor/neighbor tell you that? That is important. The incoming water will be the primary source of nutrients for the pond life…bubbling up through a spring…where? Up hill, under water?
Fourth, fish naturally come to ponds by birds s—- in the ponds. And birds eat s—- in ponds. We put up a duck box at a shaded end and had ducks come and add fish and eat stuff.
Fifth, I hate the look; but, a pond dye with a bio agent works. Read up on it follow directions. First time is terrible. Let it play out. Following year much better.
By muck you mean aquatic life habitat and by plants you mean the stuff that cleans the water for said life?
I think everyone in this sub needs to look themselves in the mirror and consider moving to the city where everything is already dead and you can do no more harm.
This pond is good habitat. Do not fuck with it.
Leave it, it’s a healthy ecosystem??? It’s clearly sustaining itself, why are you gonna fuck with it?
Man, fuck this whole post.
Pave it over, f nature
Know your neighbors. Especially the ones with drones and airplanes. And especially especially the ones you don’t know about that are midnight fishing, or otherwise feel like the my have some implicit claims on your property.
What the other respondents are signaling to you is that the minute you go to make it more useful to you, somebody who you don’t even know exists is going to report thst pond as habitat for some endangered virus and the EPA is going to tell the ATF to shoot your dog.
I’m pretty sure OP is trolling us
I would just clear out maybe 60’ along one shore line if you’re looking to fish. Maybe a floating dock for a small little John boat but I wouldn’t disturb much more. What’s the deepest point?
Dig a decent sized area near your pond in whatever shape you’d prefer for bank fishing. Dig the ground out around your pond so your hole merges with the pond. Then you’d just have to keep the sides around that newly dug area maintained.
You should be able to rent the equipment you’d need for a couple thousand and it’s no more than a days work. This way you won’t have to screw with the water quality of an established pond… you’ll just make it a bit bigger and everyone wins.
This has got to be ragebait and it’s working because I’m seething
Unless this is entirely on your property and man made, you could get in a heap of trouble touching this.
This is beautiful. Doing anything to it unless absolutely necessary will DESTROY it. This is a perfectly well functioning ecosystem. What you consider “muck and vegetation” is actually a well balanced living habitat with plentiful food sources for all levels of the food chain. This is a pond that pond lovers dream of. Literally picture perfect for those who can see the true beauty of nature in action. It does so much better when we dont mess with it.
Just work with what you got. If nothing else get a kayak or what have you, go around and survey what’s there, and then you could try to stock it with fish yourself by catch and release from other nearby water (get a lil aerator for minnow buckets, pop it into water filled igloo cooler, and catch some small/medium panfish, and find a hatchery to buy like 200 minnows). A friend’s dad did this with an even smaller pond, and it worked good until some otters came along and cleaned it out.
It’s your pond, its not a huge wrench in natures plan to try stocking, and isnt too hard if there’s enough room and your area doesnt have a deep freeze. If you get a hard freeze, you can also aerate ponds
This pond is easily fishable as is what? I was fishing way more inhospitable ponds at 6 in Florida, gators obviously included
Fucking city slickers man
Add in some solar powered fountains to help with algae build up? plan to fish in one specific area and just clear a small piece of the stuff your line would get tangled on. Pull it yourself from a kayak?
So much for the younger generation being the future of our planet.
Bless all y’all.
I had a 2-acre pond full of cows, cow shit, copperheads, and alligator snapping turtles.
I spent a bajillion dollars on permits and dozer work. Emptied the whole damn thing, restructured the spring area so it wouldn’t collapse, put up a permanent fence to keep the damn cows out, hand-planted hundreds of sedges, trees, and pond plants. Fish selected and ordered for May.
And this guy has the pond that I want.
What are you trying to accomplish? Unless it’s lost significant depth from accumulating muck, I would leave it. If thats the issue and you dont want to spend money, I would buy a really long rake and just do 15 minutes a day. Remove it to somewhere it won’t wash back in.
Also long term, ensure that soil and other nutrients can’t wash into your pond and that will go a long way towards keeping it somewhat open. If its impossible to eliminate, then create a bog and berm to collect and filter the water moving into your pond, and plant that heavily with plants appropriate for your location (example there are some reeds, gasses, monkeyflower, etc that are native and appropriate in my location) . But a healthy amount of plants contribute to water clarity and pond health. What you have doesn’t appear excessive.
The responses are unhinged lmao.
What is your end goal would probably be very helpful. Other than “fishing” what do you imagine this to look like?
As others have said, don’t go adding any types of chemicals or water cleaners, wild life can do that for free without adding “toxins” to nature.
By reading some of this, it seems you just want to remove some vegetation around the base? If that’s the case, you have 2 good hands and 2 good feet.
Go with with some boots, sharp knife, and just start cutting away. I personally wouldn’t remove to the roots, just cut short. Do research on some turtles or something that you can add (natural to the environment) that will eat and keep the vegetation low. Add fish, let nature do the rest while you do as little as possible to get this to what you think you want to fish
Umm. I hate to be that Guy but im going to be that guy.
It wasnt neglected its thriving.
Don’t fuck with it, maybe plant some native shrubs or trees near the shoreline to prevent erosion. THATS IT
You should leave that as is.
Maybe consider rethinking how you fish instead. I see plenty of places to throw short casts. Avoid heavy lures and experiment a bit, and plan on loosing a few.
That is a beautiful nature spot. Please don’t destroy this haven for wildlife!
This pond appears to be THRIVING. Frankly, you’re insane to want to do anything to it.
Humans always think they know best for nature and we always come in and destroy it.
If you HAVE to do something, clear a small part for fishing and build yourself a little dock or something.