Cecil Baird1 - Sounds like I'm lucky to have a good hatchery fairly close to me. Cecil, I have seen some of the trout you've raised so if you say he's good, he must be. The White House thing is pretty cool, too.
catmandoo - The pond was built as flood control so it only collects runoff water as far as I know. Here's what could potentially happen if it's a dry spring and summer:
If it's mild and a lot of rain to turn the pond over, a few might make it through the summer but it's not something I expect to happen.
txelen - I think I'm going to do 50 trout of each size category, just for a little variety and I had thought about doing the 8-9" range first to see how they do for a couple of weeks but I may just do them all at once as it hasn't been warm out for quite a while. The pond is probably 6' deep right now, with the potential to get up to 12' when full. You can't really see it well in the pic above but there is about a 250-300 yard long field extending from the upper end of the lake and a 50 yard flat area on the left side of the pic. (Assuming this is the flood plain for the lake.) This keeps a pretty constant breeze going down there and seems to funnel the wind down through the hollow from the inlet end towards the dam. With a good amount of wind and lack of depth, I hadn't thought an aerator would be needed, what would the benefit of running one be?
esshup - That is pretty impressive growth over that period of time! I think for this group, I'll just go with hand feeding and if they do well I'll definitely consider adding a feeder if I stock them in the fall. Did your trout show much growth length wise or more in girth? Do you think an evening or morning feeding time is better? I was thinking morning would be better for when it starts to get warmer in May but if there's not a big difference I may go with an evening feeding time so the wife and daughter could do it when I'm working then.
