This winter was like an old-fashioned winter of my youth, apart from starting a bit late. It was cold, never had a thaw, snowed a lot, and got the pond ice the thickest it has ever been. More than 18 inches.

My garden pond suffered a complete kill. My aerator tube froze up despite it being insulated, and the pond deicer disappeared under the snow, so I didn't know it stopped doing anything for a month. All koi fish and frogs, dead. It probably froze near to the bottom, despite being 3.5ft deep.

The 1/2 acre pond seems in good shape, but the center STILL has about 10 inches of ice in the middle, though it would be hard to get to it from the 1 ft of open water around the rim. Normally we are ice out by now, lots of March sun and multiple days above freezing do the trick.

This unfortunately has presented an interesting problem with my dock, as the pilons are still locked in ice, but the ice is otherwise a floating island held tenuously in place by my dock.

Last year the dock's posts got yanked upwards and out of the concrete footers when the water rose after getting locked in ice. This year, still loose, they are getting pushed off the concrete to the side.
It may be time to remove the end of the dock, replace with a ramp out to a floating dock platform I can pull out in the fall. After all, it already looks like a ramp down into the water.

Hey, at least no sign (yet) of any significant fish kill. Just a couple of small Black Crappie.