Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Uuuh. Fish? What am I doing here?

I picked up a 7acre spring-fed pond in upstate NY this year. Its cold climate, and at about 1250 fr elevation if freezes pretty hard. Solid 100% ice for many months.

It does not have much of a fish population- lots of bullfrogs and turtles. It's not deep- I would say the majority of it is 5-6ft in depth. There is an area in front of the main dam maybe 200x200ft that tapers down to 9 ft. There are some channels of 7ft here and there. The bottom is full of old trees, leaves, and silt. I was told by the grandson of the guy that built the pond that there were large bass in it years ago, but there was a freeze that killed them. It may have also been deeper then. The pond is 50 years old and was never dredged..

So I am not a fisherman, but I have friends and family and kids that like to fish. My goal is to introduce an easy to manage, self-sustaining, population people would enjoy fishing for and feeding. I don't want anything that requires significant effort- like annual restocking like as needed for trout. Is the pond deep enough for anything interesting in my climate? Should I put a bottom aerator in the deeper portion to pump air in during hard freezes?

Any ideas of species to put in?
Thanks!!

A good source of info for you would be Dr. Mark Cornwell's (of SUNY Cobleskill, IIRC) articles in back/future issues of PBMag. He has a lot of experience with NY waters and has a pond at a fair elevation there at home.

Two of those times were when he dropped a cold drink into the water.