My fish most certainly have more than they can eat. None of them have died. All they have done is grow. It's not like I have any way to cut off their feeding as Mr. Snrub has suggested. Now on the other hand, I can stop feeding high protein pellets, but that is in no way going to stop the fish from feeding on other critters that are also high in protein.
For fish to grow, they have to eat. And they will. Whether you stop feeding them or not......if they have a forage base, they ARE going to eat. Sure.....that does slow down given certain temperatures. But feeding tendencies do not.....and will not, stop.
Here's the other thing about digestion and metabolism.
Just because it gets cold, a fish does not lose its digestive abilities. The necessary bodily fluids are still there and they still break down consumed forage the exact same way. That is not what changes when the water gets cold. It doesn't change.
What changes is the fish become inactive as temperatures drop, burning far less calories due to inactivity. In turn it requires far less forage/calories to maintain its weight, or even add weight.
In short , if a fish is going to eat itself to death, and you have a forage base that allows for it. Then you can't stop it.
Everything in red italic is scientific fact. So lets debate these findings.
I see a lot of opining, conjecture, theorizing and hypothesis in red, but little "fact".
Fish are opportunistic and will eat when they can. When cold and the metabolism slows, they still eat, yet the feed is not digested, metabolized nor utilized the same. In a 2 year University of Arkansas study involving catfish, they discovered feeding weekly, or not feeding at all, when water temps drop below 55*, the fish lost the same amount of weight. Feeding daily however, even to water temps of 45*, fish did not lose weight (nor did they gain weight). It's unclear if the cost of daily feeding in cold water outweighs waiting till water warms, food conversion efficiency increases, and less feed is required to regain lost weight. It was noted more mortalities were discovered from visceral toxicosis of catfish (VTC), a rather tough disease to work through. Catfish can acquire it by eating dead fish in the pond. It was unclear if daily feeding had killed fish originally....
What I see, at best, from winter feeding is you get no gain in growth, but lose money from feed expenses, and can potentially create more problems than not feeding at all....
