Bringing this back from a few months ago. The warm weather is here in my part of Southern Ontario and I still have all my brookies/tigers/browns and a few rainbows in the pond. Usually I pull the brookies out in mid may but I have been sick the past few weeks and wasn't able to. The guy I got everything but the brookies from gave me some advice last fall about having the trout make it thru the summer in my pond. My pond is aprox 1/2 acre, with 2-16'+ holes and an average depth of 10 feet. The pond is not directly spring fed but is 100% ground source and is directly in the water table. The pond butts up to a 6 acre Pete Moss bog/swamp with the water table being less than a foot from the surface even in the hottest days of summer.
In the past I have lost the brookies in early June and the browns/rainbows have made it thru the summer with no issues other than the one year I had the pond turn over due to 6" of rain in less than an hour.
Anyway, this guy told me to shut down feeding all together come mid may (I havn't feed in over 2 weeks). He said they will use 3 or 4 times the oxygen eating as they would if they wern't being fed. He said they will no problem find enough food on there own for 3 months if they can make it thru. The other thing he mentioned that would be benificial is building a few floating rafts as large as possible. I could easily build a few 16x16 rafts with 1/4" plywood to sheild the sunlight over the two deep holes and the cost would be very minimal (aprox $200 for the two including the barrels which I already have).
I have my aerators in the top 1/4 of the water column (difusers that float up from the bottom when air is going thru them).
I also typically dye the pond also as I am not looking for a bloom with the trout and it seems to really keep the weeds down which I don't have many of because the seriously deep sides of the pond (all sides but one little area drop faster in depth than distance you go out) and also seems to help the temps a bit.
Anyone have any opinions on these idea's? I will pull out a few of the brookies if I can but am really intrested to see if I can get them to last into the fall...
Thanks in advance...Ryan
