To cover or not to cover, seeking any opinions or input

[Moni_Pond]

Hello garden pond friends! I am seeking input. This will be my fourth winter season with our pond, the third with fish In it. The winters with fish I have covered it as our pond is surrounded by trees, our yard is basically a small forest. The trees include oak, maple, black walnut, cigar, red bud, weeping willow, and tulip. Lots of droppings for sure. This year I happen to be unemployed for the first time in my life, so I do have the available time to go out there and scoop leaves multiple times per day. It can be challenging to scoop leaves without scooping fish as my fish pals practically jump into the nets and follow me around at the surface. We normally cover our waterfall bog with the net as well, but this year we have considered running the waterfall throughout most of winter. I do believe the pond is around 15,000 gallons (in previous posts I put 10,000, but after measuring better I do believe it’s 15k). Both pumps (waterfall & stream) are submerged with a 3.5 foot depth. We have four inch piping for the pond and stream pumps and the waterfall is at least six feet above the pond so I don’t believe the piping would fill with enough water to freeze on that slope. I will definitely turn off the stream and remove that pump, as my stream is about 100 feet long and completely fills with leaves.

So, what would YOU do? Would you cover this pond? I’ve outlined my pros and cons to covering said pond.

Pros:

• Keeps out leaves
• Keeps out predators while fish are moving slow in winter
• Keeps out poor birdies that get stuck in there

Cons:

• A big job to put it out and cover the pond - challenging, but we can get it done. Is a very very heavy duty net (actually two nets and we tent them with PVC). The shape of the pond is also part of the challenge. We have to use two giant nets and we zip tie the two together where they meet up to minimize leaves coming through (and my small dog).
• My dogs think it is for them to walk on and they dig multiple holes in the nets each winter that i have to repair in spring. My small chihuahua could fall through a hole and drown.
• Hard to get in the pond in winter - on random warm winter days I do occasionally put on the waders and do some cleaning because inevitably some leaves make their way in.
• Birds, specifically mourning doves, find their way under the net somehow and get stuck and die. Also my dogs see the birds under the nets and hence the holes they dig in the nets killing the birds. Then dogs become obsessed with the pond and I worry about them falling in.

Thanks for taking time to read this. I appreciate any and all experiences or input.

EDIT TO ADD: The previous homeowners that built the pond never covered it, but they didn’t have fish. The first couple of winters I had two pond companies look at building a net system or helping us build one and they both struggled with how to build a structure due to both the odd shape and placement of the very wide waterfall and stream entrance.