I built a new pond about 40 minutes away from my home. My question is...would I be doing more harm than good feed fish chow once a week when I'm out on the farm?

Obviously I can't feed daily unless a buy an automatic feeder. I stocked last week with fathead, bluegill, redear, and channel cat.

Thanks for your help.

If you follow the usual caveats on feeding (feed floating food for easy monitoring, don't feed more than 10 lbs/acre or more than the fish eat in 10-15 minutes - those types of thumb-rules), I don't think you can hurt anything. At one feeding per week, it may take a while before the fish figure it all out (feed once a day during a vacation at the farm to get started?). My CC have a pretty good memory and recall right away what the food is for when I start feeding in the Spring (water temp > 60 deg), so I think that once a week would do them some good after they got started. I can't speak for BG eating feed, as mine haven't ever caught on yet.

I've been feeding sporadically for 4 years. My place is 70 miles from home. When I walk down to the pond, huge masses of bluegills congregate and boil the water. The cats used to until they figured out that I wasn't a nice guy.

If you were to choose once weekly feedings the only kind of harm that comes immediately to mind would be increased nutrient load caused by uneaten, decaying feed. Will you be able to make observations as to how much utilization you're getting? Fish are harder to train with an irregular feeding schedule, but I'd think that once they catch on, even less frequent feedings can be beneficial. Also lower frequency means that fish won't become entirely dependent on feed which can be a good thing as well.

Thanks for your replies. I'll always be there long enough to make certain they eat the feed so that I'm not over feeding.

I'll visit the feed store this weekend and see how smart / dumb my fish are.

I would make a couple of feed rings to keep most of the food in one spot (preferably around habitat). Let some drift so it will pass over more fish. I have better luck training my fish if the food is in the same place. Since you are from KS that wind will push that feed up on the bank before they get a sniff of it. It also seems to help to if you feed them in low light conditions (dusk and dawn). That is my experience, but I believe others feed during daytime, so I may be wrong.

How would I go about making a feed ring and how big should it be?

It depends on how far you are throwing the feed as to how big the ring is. I have 2 that are made of 3/4 in PVC, 2.5 ft x 2.5 ft. with 4 elbows to make it a square. I have one on my bigger pond that is 5 ft. x 5 ft. I would just take some 3/4 in. black tube/hose and make a circular one if I did it again. Join the two ends and anchor it down. At one time I used a hula hoop. Worked great, unless the wind was blowing really hard, it would rock the hoop enough that the feed got out of the hoop.

If I were you, I would look into buying a Native Outdoor feeder. They work great and run about 80$. It has worked great at my place. You can read many other posts about them.

Thanks for all the useful tips. That feeder does look attractive and affordable. The wind is the biggest problem I'll have. Hope they can get to the food before it ends up on the dam. I have a 1.5 acre pond.

I would still use a feed ring if you are concerned about the wind. The feeder sets itself to go off 30 min. post sunrise and 30 min. pre sunset so the wind shouldn't be quite so bad. Right now that is approx. 630 AM and 8 PM. I would still go with a 5ft. x 5ft. ring (or larger) to catch the feed coming out of the feeder. Esp. in the spring when the wind blows the most here in the midwest and the fish are slower and just learning to feed.

Wow...white caps on the pond today. I threw some feed into the pond today and just let it dift...didn't see any activity. I'm definately going to build the feeding ring!

A wind baffle on the feeding ring works very good to keep the pellets inside the ring even on windy days and during heavy feeding and splashing activity from fish. I strap a piece of flat vinyl siding around the inside of the ring. Height of vinyl siding can range from 3" to 6" wide.

Great suggestion Bill! Thanks for the tip.