Well, Thanks to the two storms that hit my area 8 days apart, I got ~20 inches of snow on 12/16 and then ~3 inches of rain on 12/24. My pond filled over night on Christmas Eve and then froze. This is the site I awoke to on Christmas day.

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

My project just sped way up. I have american pond weed in my forage pond that appeared on it's own that I will transplant some after the water warm up in late spring. I also am thinking about adding Pickerelweed (pontederia cordata) to this pond. I know some consider pickerelweed invasive but it is native to my area so I figure why not, if it starts to get out of hand, I can always throw in a few tripoid grass carp. I am going to let plenty of plants get established before I add anything to this pond. As I said before, the outflow from my forage pond flows into this pond so I'm hoping that some spotfin shiners and lake chubsuckers make their way to this pond on their own. I would be very pleased if the glass shrimp I have in my forage pond showed up in my game pond. Maybe I will invest in a good net and speed that process along after I have some plants growing in there.

The siphon system is working perfectly. I haven't manually started a siphon yet but I might give it a try this weekend just to see how easy it is to do.