Well the pond finally opened up completely yesterday. The only loss that I could see was one bull frog. I actually saw a "big swirl" on the surface as we completed our walk around which I could tell was a good sized fish. I will not know the final results of my "unintended expirement" until my water temp. reaches approx. 55 degrees and its time to begin feeding but based on the location and size of the surface disturbance it had to be one of my larger HSB.
I know I've raised some eyebrows with this thread but I felt and still feel that it is neccesary to shed some light on this topic. As I stated previously, I was surprised by some of the "warnings" posted by people on this site about winter kill. Common sense will tell you that if your pond is only 6' deep and it freezes 3' down nothing can survive. But there were people on this site telling un-educated posters that they needed to either keep their ponds "open" all winter long or they had to clear snow off of them the day it happend. My "unintended expirement" showed that if you have a 1/2 acre pond that has 50% of it at 12'depth and your bio-mass is what it should be then you don't have to panic about winter kill. These are the facts, and that is what expirements create, FACTS. I get the "variable" part of all of this but the variables don't flucuate all that much from pond to pond if the structure is similar. The reason I started this thread was to educate some of the newer pond owners in northern states about ponds freezing over in the winter and I feel I have done that. I will follow up with final results hoefully within a couple weeks. Its supposed to get cold here again this week so I probably won't be feeding for a while. Thanks Jeff
