Rich, how far down do you have to drain the pond to repair the dam?
If your still gonna have 2 or 3 ft of water you could still stock minnows in the spring and add structure, fatheads and shiners are pretty tough.
Then when the pond is refilled you can decide if you want to stock the trout or wait longer.
Good question....unfortunately another reason for draining the pond besides fixing the dam is to excavate more and bring the one end to the 6-9' avg depth (at least). Not sure I want to put the forage fish in until after all the heavy equipment work is done. If it was a simple matter of only draining and patching that would work...but with the digging I will still probably have to wait until after the repair is done and it begins to settle and refill again.
