Those sound like good suggestions. I've been told it's better to get the forage community established and going strong, and THEN put in the LMB.
What I read is that HES much less aggressive, don't know much about YP but seems they're more mellow too....yes? And supposedly they're very willing to take a hook, so they sound like a good way to go. Yeah, CC's I've been told are not only major predators- lots of competition for the LMB that I don't need- but that they'll mess things up in general. The biologist at Jones said if I really like eating cats, fine, but otherwise leave them off.
The feeding sounds fun, but I'm thinking if I start with that, then the fish will heavily depend on that, am I right? Again, my thinking is to try to keep things as "natural" as possible.
Nope, the fish won't depend on the food. They WILL eat it, just like if someone puts Ice Cream in front of you, you will eat it, but you don't depend on Ice Cream for all your meals. It's supplemental feeding in a pond that has forage fish in it vs. the only thing that they will eat like if they were in a raceway or in an aquaculture setting only with fish their own size that they cannot eat.
