Saturday I drove to a farm pond I fished last probably 25 years ago. The pond was always a good producer of fish up to 4 pounds and usually in good numbers. It was my 'go-to' pond after I would watch Jimmy Houston or Bill Dance TV shows and needed to try out a new technique. It's a small pond, creek fed, probably 30- 40 yards across one way and 50-60 the other. In the past it's been fairly clear water with a nice blue color to it and probably 10 feet or so deep at the deepest. I get out of the truck this time and there are a few bunches of pads and other patches of growth around the edges and the water was a chocolate milk color. I'm OK w the pads/moss but the brown water has me somewhat puzzled (turnover maybe?). I threw a frog and caught 5-6 fish but nothing of any size (we're talking 6-8 inch bass). I also threw a mini spinner bait with an electric chicken colored paddle tail trailer and caught a few bluegill. My Step Son threw a worm and caught a few bass but again, all very small. The pond isn't actively managed to optimize fishing so just not sure where to go from here. Back in the day, when I was catching 30-40 small fish per outting at this pond, I would throw out the small ones. Over a couple of years this seemed to improve the fishing and I was able to catch bigger fish. However, with the very few fish we caught this time and the fact that none of them had any size to them, I'm somewhat hesitant to do that again but not necessarily against it.

Any ideas? My thought is to give it a month or so to see if the water conditions improve and we're able to catch any quality fish. I'm open to any other suggestions you all might have or any ideas what might be going on with it. Hard to tell with such a big gap since the last time i fished it. Thanks in advance.

Could be silted in. There's a pond close to my house that used to be great, but with the floods in 2015, 2017, and this spring a lot of silt run off has settled on the bottom and the water isn't nearly as clear.

Thanks @CCTX. I'm going to revisit it in a month or so and see how it looks then. Hoping it will improve!

You likely answered your own question. That would be my guess without knowing anything about the forage fish.

Thanks @Meadowlark. Going to fish it in a few more weeks and might have some more info. If it repeats itself, the small ones will be culled asap!

Without further investigation, I think CCTX's guess on siltation is a good one. Whole lot can happen to a small pond in 25 years. If it has stayed severely muddy for long the food chain has probably collapsed. Minnows and bluegills don't tend to thrive in muddy water without some artificial feeding; even then it's just better, not great.

I sure hope not. It sits at the top of a hill so I'll just have to so I can't imagine it would ever be affected by flood waters but if the creek feeding it had a bunch of silt then certainly could be an issue. I'll fish it soon and give an update.