I'm going to disagree with you Travis but must qualify my posting by admitting that I'm not familiar enough with Northern stocking(s).
It is my belief that Fall stocking of predators does very little good since they will be mostly dormant during the winter. I would think that Iowa would see some mortalities due to extreme(well, extreme to me) cold and icing over.
Dave, I bucket stocked a 4' deep, .25 acre mud hole on my land with some GSF and then added 20# of FH in April of '04. Oct. '05 I added 10 6" LMB. When I drined the "pond" after the March '06 with 1" of ice still on it, to start enlarging the pond, all 10 LMB were recovered and ranged from 8-10+". (Maybe 6 straight weeks total under ice as thick as 5" that winter)
Yes Jhap, I intentionally stocked a pond of mine with GSF....I knew they would be gone soon.
I would say that is pretty decent winter growth.
