Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding Time of year to stop feeding

How long before the snow flies should I stop feeding the BG's? I am feeding almost every night. I am in Northern Indiana, and using 1/8" pellets, not sure what brand.

Mike, get a pool thermometer or an indoor/outdoor thermometer and take water temp readings. The fish will tell you when they don't want to eat anymore pellets, and that's usually in the low 60°F range. There's no set date, it goes by water temp.

Fall can be one of th great times of year to feed. Moderate temps better than hot temps but small window of opportunity. The fish will le tyou know when to stop but like Scott says less than 60 slow to no max once a day at hottest part of the day.

My motto is when deer season starts, fish feeding stops.. Everything goes on the back burner for deer season..

At what water depth to you look at for these tempers

Use a surface temperature mesurement taken a 6"-12" deep is adequate for a general idea.

Just to throw a monkey wrench into everyones thoughts, I feed all year long.

I set the feeder to feed for 1 second at 1:00 p.m. during the winter. I have a diffuser set in front of the feeder so there is a good sized open hole in the ice. The reason why I'm feeding is that the trout in the pond will feed on pellets all winter long. Last year 2# RBT stocked in late October were 7# in June.

My plan is to get a few rbt from you this fall, so my next question is how shallow will they come up in to feed? That will help determine my feeder placement this year.

7 lbs...wow!

Scott, 7 lbs is awesome! A few years ago I stock some 3/4 RBT in Nov and they made it thru the next summer and were 3.5 pound about a year+ later, but didn't make it thru the following summer. This was in mid west GA. Really enjoyed having them in the pond.
Mike, when it got hot, about 6 of these trout would go up a small creek looking for cooler water and I feed them there - the water was 1' deep and about 3' wide. Unfortunately, a &%#%@&% heron killed a couple of them.

A portion of my pond drops off pretty quickly to 10' deep when it's at full pool. I have my diffuser for the winter suspended 5' up off the bottom in that area, and it's close enough to shore so the open water is within a foot or so of the shoreline. I did that because I almost lost my 2 dogs in the pond one year - they went in after some geese and couldn't climb back up on top of the ice. I moved the winter diffuser after that. Yesterday I saw a trout swimming within a couple feet of the shoreline, about 18" below the water surface.

24" RBT that died because of the warm water.


I stocked golden trout this year