Welcome to Pond Boss!
If you pick smallmouth bass as your predator, you will also need forage fish for them. Preferably, several different species.
Yellow perch is a good option to go with SMB. Also need something in the minnow size, that does well in your particular area. You might search through some of the old threads on SMB ponds. There are some from the northern U.S., and even some from Canada.
As to aeration, I am not sure you need it much? Cold water is capable of holding much more dissolved oxygen than warm water.
I sometimes get to fish with my cousins at their cabin on a nice lake in southern Ontario. It is south of your property, but sometimes has ice in the shallower portions of the lake that is 5-6' thick. That seems (to me) too thick for the plants to be able to produce some oxygen throughout the winter, yet somehow they do. My cousins have never observed a fish kill (that they know of).
Maybe you could run a few very shallow diffusers during the winter beside your dock and in some other areas just to keep a tiny portion of the lake ice free. (They do have to rebuild or repair their dock every 3-4 years, depending on how the ice breaks up on the lake.)
Their lake has SMB, YP, rock bass, walleye, some lake trout, and several species of minnow type fish. With all of those consumers - the lake still has leeches! When we swim in the summer, the adults that swim out to the deepwater floating dock or paddle board around the lake typically do not get any leeches. The small children that splash around in the shallow sandy water do get leeches.
How deep is your shallower pond? If it does have a couple of deep spots, you may not need to deepen it. Of course, if it has too much shallow water that it is choked with plants and is unfishable, then that is a different situation.
How old are your ponds? Did the gravel operations recently cease? Is 1/3 of the shoreline tall reeds in both ponds? In that case, you may not need to deepen the ponds, but rather just steepen the profile of your pond slopes. You might determine what is the average depth that no longer supports abundant plants, and try to steepen some parts of the pond so the profile quickly goes from shore to that depth. There will be some angle of repose, that is the maximum steepness that the gravel will remain stacked.
If you go that route (a lot of work), I would not steepen the whole shoreline. Having some heavy cover for your forage fish, and having some good oxygen production during winter are both big benefits.
Good luck on your upcoming pond projects!
