lakedoc,

sorry about the delay. had some work in Ohio just got back. I have run across a few ponds where guys try additional feeding for the purposes of growing bass. It usually does not work. Bass need 10 pounds of forage to gain one pound, therefore you need allot of fish and a large wallet to stock enough to put weight on bass. I realize you are interested in maintaining fish weight and with that in mind I dont think a few additional baitfish will hurt anything.

on the other hand we dont get the freezing over down here so I have no experience with this. One potential problem you could have by crowding fish before the freeze would be oxygen problems. Consider the BOD. (biological oxygen demand) this term is used to represent everything that uses oxygen in a pond. fish, plants (at night), bacteria that makes things rot, insects and anything else that uses oxygen contributes to BOD. When weather cools down bass eat less, their metabolism slows with their body temp. They may not gobble up all the forage you add to the pond. If the pond freezes with thousands of additional forage fish they could possibly contribute to oxygen depletion under the ice. again, I have no experience with frozen ponds so this is just an educated guess on my part.

If you are getting good results without winter fish kills I say keep doing it. If it were me I would add the baitfish fairly early in the fall to make sure bass have an opportunity to feed up before sub-zero temps.