Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Eating Shinners over panfish ?

Me too, but I don't see Bob refuting that. Rather, maybe because fusiform forage [GSH, YP, Salamanders, etc.] are easier to swallow than BG, more can be consumed in a given amount of time [LMB lifetime], and the impact on fusiform forage is therefore greater than on other types of forage. If a LMB gets a hold of a 10" GSH I'd think there's a very high probability it's going straight to the stomach. An 8" BG, that's another story. Think of it's width and spines...maybe fewer of those end up becoming a meal. I know every 4th BG I catch at my main pond has some kind of battle scars on it - usually a bite scrape that looks like it would match the gape of a SMB or HSB that just couldn't get it down. So a LMB hits 5 GSH and 5 BG in a given timeframe. Of those 5 GSH, 4 become meals. Of the 5 BG, maybe 2 or 3 get caught sideways or are able to give a good spike to the roof of the mouth and escape predation. So, mortality of fusiform fish are necessarily higher. Extrapolate over the lifetime of a bass - there's a huge gap between the number of fusiform forage being consumed vs Sunfish. To put it into JHAP terms: You could put away significantly more brats than nachos in a given timeframe. Maybe I'm way off on this, but my fishery seems to suggest I may be onto something.

Now the real science to embrace here is discovering how one combines brats and nachos...there's a Super Bowl culinary project I just might have to tackle!