I've learned about winter aeration from the school of hard knocks too. Some bad advice out there and sometimes people sell you stuff but don't tell you anything. I too aerated in the deepest water with not one but two diffusers my first winter! More is better right? \:o I didn't have a fish kill probably because the pond was so new, but my bass were definintely stressed come spring and some of the biggest ones succumbed to some kind of pathogen, I'm assuming, because their immune system was compromised by the stress. After I stopped that stupidity my fish have come into spring just fine ever since.

I have found here in northern Indiana if you can keep the snow off for the most part you don't need any aeration. However I set up a diffuser in shallow water with a small compressor just in case we get lots of snow before the ice gets very thick. If your ice isn't very thick yet, and you get lots of snow you're screwed if you want to get the snow off the ice. And the gas release thing causes me to crank it up when air temps are above freezing to open up a hole now and then. I do have a really high density of feed trained bass so I may run the shallow diffuer all winter to be on the safe side. I do run a small one in shallow water on the trout pond all winter.

I use a snow blower on my .62 acre pond and believe me the pond looks really big when you have to blow the snow off. However I believe if you take it off in strips you're O.K.

For the one from Missouri --how much ice do you get in Missouri? I know you get an occasional snowstorm, but I would think if your ice doesn't last more than a month you shoudn't have to aerate if you can keep the snow off.

So far a mild winter here too. Had skim ice a couple times on the small trout pond and only once on the bigger warmwater fish pond. But we usually dont' get good ice until around Christmas.

If pigs could fly bacon would be harder to come by and there would be a lot of damaged trees.