Tyler,

You probably did lose many of your larger predator fish along with your catfish and that is why your feed supply is exploding. Not all dead fish float to the surface and some that do are carried off by scavengers at night or in the wee hours of the morning. Your fish aren't interested in pellet feed probably due to the abundant natural feed. Even my bass that feed on pellets everyday would still go for live feed thrown to them (shiners) if given the chance.

Too bad you don't live closer to northern Indiana. I'd be glad to sell you some 12 to 14 inch largermouth from my pond really cheap that don't feed on the pellets. I will have the pond electroshocked this fall and will be culling out many of the bass that aren't pellet feeders (can easily tell by there thinner bodies).

You could get on on the Internet and find New York's listing of fish hatcheries. Or contact your Environmental Conservation Department and they should be able to supply you with a list. If all else fails I can send you a copy.

New York has lots of hatcheries. I doubt if anyone would want to seine any bass this time of year though, but they proabably would once the water cools down.

Are you doing anything to prevent winterkill again? No sense in spending money on fish only to have it happen again.

BTW, those 6 to 7 inche bass anymore tend to be pellet trained and will grow quite rapidly. I used to put them that size in a floating cage in the spring and by late summer they were 10 12 inches. As you elluded to I would be leary of planting local wild bass though. I've added wild fish and regretted it with bacterial and parasite problems.

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