Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Smallest practical trout pond

Here are a couple of interesting & informative posts from Wood about trout ponds and fish survival under ice cover:
I too have rainbows and am looking at aeration. This is a new pond dug last fall, no vegetation yet and have just stocked 150 trout 5-7". Pond is 150ft x 50ft x about 12ft deep.
Bill Cody, yourself and others have helped me get started already but I am intrigued by your opinions on aeration specific to Trout. First, Bill had suggested that I MAY not even require aeration for the first couple of years due to low amounts of sludge and nutrient, (I am not feeding) and has explained the benefits of a diffusor style system.
I do intend on over-wintering at least some fish. Alberta winters are very extreme, with ice on by Oct/Nov and not off until mid to end of May. Ice thickness last winter on local lakes was 30" minimum. I realize the benefits of removing snow, but am undecided on aeration and after reading your posts I am more unsure.

I will shut down the compressor at first ice, early October and will re-start when completely off, April or May usually. Remove snow from two-thirds of surface once it is safe to walk on and keep it free of snow. I had no fish kill doing this last winter with ice thickness of 36". I did not change my compressor run times at spring startup, 6pm to 8am and my pond did not stratify this year. For me at least, snow removal is more important than winter aeration.

In a later post with more winter experience Wood stated:
Last winter I had 196 days of ice on my pond. Maximum ice thickness was over 30". I did not aerate and had no winterkill at all. This is a newer pond and fairly low density. I did remove most snow cover quickly and routinely.
The one thing I found that did suprise me was the amount of light penetration through very thick ice. Dropping the underwater camera down even with only 6" of snow cover showed almost complete darkness, yet where I kept the snow off was very well illuminated all the way to bottom even with near 3 foot ice thickness. For my purposes, snow removal is key to over wintering trout and not aeration.

Wood