Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - What's this hot mess going to turn into?

So... Four y/o new pond upstate NY about 1/2 acre. 14ft deepest, at least 10ft for half. Some shallow area less than 1ft with grasses and some cat tail starting. Didnt do much for habitat but rock piles boulder clusters. Some wood debris and small trees falls in there. Good shoreline grasses.

So I'm am not interested in managing a fish population, or feeding them. Tbh I don't fish but I friends and their kids that do so I thought just "throw some stuff in". I know. Not good. Heres what I've done.

Year 1 I added fat heads and shiners. They populated really well. Theres a population of what we think are pumpkinseed sunfish that came in from another pond I used to partially fill this one. By year 2, also Lots of turtles and water snakes, and bullfrogs tadpoles. Fall year 2 I added 50 perch (2-3 inches), but they disappeared and I never saw them, and year 3 and the pond had a stable mix of sunfish, minnows, turtles and snakes.... Nothing overpopulated. This this year 4, we saw a perch ribbon in the spring and to my surprise our friend just caught one to, about 7-8 inches, so I guess they were there hiding all year 3! Now, in year 4, my friends just rehomed some bass in it - 6 largish ones 1-1.5 lbs, and 10 small ones like 6 inches. I imagine those large bass are going to pretty much fill up on all the goodies. My wife is worried they'll eat the painted turtles and baby snappers- that's what she likes.

So, without management or feeding, any predictions on this mess will evolve into. Pond seems healthy with plankton and color. People like to swim in it. Will it overpopulate with stunted fish of some sort, and or will populations find a balance of some sort? What do people predict? As for management, my friends could come over and harvest some fish if that needed? I do have an aeration system I have not installed yet, and I'm on the fence about installing it or not. The pond freezes over pretty hard in winter and we skate on it. What difference will adding bottom diffusion make?

Thanks for any thought you all have!!!

Pond with 14 ft depth and 3+" of snow cover will hold dissolved oxygen(DO) for around 4 to 6 weeks depending on age of the pond and amount or depth of bottom muck. More bottom muck consumes more DO quicker. DO loss starts from the bottom and gradually over time DO loss moves toward the ice cover to the top.
Water clarity also plays a role in how deep sunlight penetrates through ice cover. You want sunlight penetrating the ice cover. Clearer ice allows more sunlight into the pond for phytoplankton DO production. If you regularly remove some snow for ice skateing you should not need to aerate the pond during winter. If you do aerate in winter, in Fall you can pull the diffuser into 3-4ft of water to keep a open ice hole from the shoreline outward for sunlight penetration. Then run diffuser daily enough (few to several hours) to remelt and reopen an ice free area. When the open hole refreezes with clear ice and no snow on top you should not need to remelt the ice free area.

Jim, my experience with winter aeration is that it is not necessary to run it all the time. There is a substantial reservoir of O2 in the pond water going into winter.
I believe our experts will say that if a pond is ice covered for more than a month at a time, some open water from running an aerator is beneficial. And, especially if you are removing snow cover for skating, sunlight will reach vegetation prompting photosynthesis. I'll shut off my air pump for periods during winter.Some winters I've waited for a few weeks after the pond has frozen to fire up the aeration. As my air hose enters the pond water from an above ground location, I have to watch that I don't have an ice plug in the hose at the water level. By turning on the pump on a warmer afternoon, I haven't experienced a problem.
Something I find fascinating to watch is the air plume growing under the unbroken surface of the pond ice and how it seeks an escape until a hole finally opens above the diffuser.
YMMV