NEfish, i'm gonna give you a safe reply here......all i would recommend is to review your pond construction steps, make your judgement that it should hold water, or that some additional tasks may need to be completed, and then fill er up.
if i had my own equipment, and werent in a hurry, i might wait and let whatever rains you might get between now and winter "test" the pond. if it held...great, if it didnt, i'd judge what I needed to do next spring and go from there.
if i to had hire a contractor back in next spring and escalate costs, that might influence me to try and fill before this winter.....
i went to a pond mgmt coarse once, covered a lot of topics...one that stuck in my brain was that a new pond should be allowed to fill, and go through a full season (year) to check integrity of everything before stocking. i've never seen that discussed here, and it probably only applies to certain (pond) situations......such as ponds built in marginal (pond) areas that are subject to seepage. just throwing that out for fodder.
