Should I clean my pond?

In the past I have always cleaned out my pond in the spring but this year thought I would leave it till the autumn.I have just had a bit of a tidy up and there is so much debris,plant roots and sludge that if I leave it till the autumn the pond will be filled up with nowhere for the fish to go,so should I clean out now and then again in the autumn or do what I have been doing for 8 years.The pond is always suceessful in that it has frogs,toads,newts etc plus the fish seem to breed OK as well.

It's not always easy to hug a hedgehog.

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't.