It seems the fish are actually happy, sometimes striking for a pellet as it is hitting the water. They don't fear me standing above the pond several feet, they line up for food instead! No dead fish, none have floated, yet. I got too many northern-Florida cross bass last spring, so I put four of them into a 1,000 gallon koi pond, no more than two feet deep. That froze down to about a foot, and, it leaked about four inches normally over several days. There are also some CNBGs in this koi pond...and one large goldfish. So far, after the freeze, I've seen only the bass and guppy minnows...the bass seem to be paired, a large and a small...they were no longer afraid of me as I stood there tossing individual pellets where the two pairs were located. They ate each pellet as though they were married...one would just sit there looking at it and the other would grab it...now your turn darling, that's what I saw, I swear!
At the big pond, with a mercury pond light, the last two nights, the two giant channels and their two smaller kin routinely cruise through, expecting more pellets to scarf...there again are the golden shiners, running clockwise around the light, maybe twenty of them, the remains of two seven pound infusions, each spring of the last two years (one is about six inches long!). Early dark, the large bluegill will line up just out of the light (faint shadows), expecting more pellets also. Never yet have I seen a predator bass or hybrid striper shoot by the light to grab a bite. Some of the bass (the new cross bred and the hybrid stripers) were feed trained, where are they at night? There be bait swimming peacefully around a light, why not eat some?
I think I was lucky that, prior to the cold event, the weather was warm for several days and I could run the aerators, the seven falls river and the fountain with only the thought that I was getting heat into the pond...had no clue yet of what was to descend upon us...but I ended up with relatively warm and well oxygenated water before the ice over.
