Water Depth in Pond or Lake

Question: How can water depth affect a pond or lake?

Answer: “Water depth can be a factor on ponds and lakes in a couple different ways. One, there’s too shallow. Too shallow, you have too much sunlight penetration so you end up with excess vegetation growth. Too shallow can be a good thing because it’s a very good area for fish bedding sites. So for fish production, too shallow sometimes can be a good thing. Too deep, on the other hand, would be unusable for fish. These deep areas, anything in excess of eight feet, generally has low oxygen levels, they’re not an appropriate area for bedding, so it’s kind of a dead zone of a pond. So there is a balance between too shallow, too deep that benefits one-way or the other. Ultimately, you want a pond to be four- to eight-foot deep with varying contours and a shoreline area three feet deep that gradually slopes at the bank.”

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