Hello everyone,

I have a 1 acre 13ft deep pond stocked with rainbow and brown trout. It is not spring fed, so the water at the surface heats up substantially during the hot periods of the summer. It is currently 26C or 79F. I am still feeding floating pellets between 2 and 7 times per week. I've noticed the rainbows are still aggressively feeding even in the warm water temperatures but the browns have almost stopped, which is strange since browns are supposed to deal with warm temperatures better. Either way, the rainbows eat all the feed I throw, but I'm wondering if I should stop to avoid stressing them and causing a fish kill. I can wait until September when the water cools down and start feeding then.

Any advice is appreciated. Thank you.

The Browns might be finding more natural feed in the pond.

How is the pondweed situation? The greatest threat the feed presents are the additional nutrients that will grow many times their weight in plants. 100 lbs of feed will easily nourish 800 lbs of FA, Elodea, etc. We are fast approaching the most dangerous time of year for fish. As daylight hours rapidly diminish, the period of night time respiration is rapidly increasing. But in late summer the effect is compounded by warm water temperature. Its a fine line between water that supports trout year round and water that can't. Too much primary production is worthy of your concern, especially considering that you keep trout year round.

That is possible, although most browns I catch in the summer don't have a lot in their stomachs. A few bugs but nothing substantial. On the other hand, you are right in that the rainbows that don't eat the pellets usually have empty stomachs from what I can tell.

Luckily, plants have gone down significantly and are not an issue like they have been before. However, I think all the decaying plant matter at the bottom can't help. The super hot weather seems to be over and surface temps are back down to 24C (75F) and should continue to drop. You are definitely right about my pond being on the line between a year round trout pond and a seasonal one. The nest couple of weeks should be a good test, and then it should be okay as September comes and temps start to drop, especially at night.