I was just wandering how many times a day others feed their BG. I feed at 9am -9:15 - 1pm - 6:30 -6:45pm every day at 3 second intervals. They always seem to eat all that floats within a few minutes. I was thinking about feeding more often. I know due to stomach size each fish can only eat so much at a time. I'm just not sure how often they would eat a day.

I hand feed twice a day. After coffee in the morning and mid afternoon. Aquamax MVP.

I'm sure they would eat one or two more times, at least when it is hot. My goal is to supplement their natural forage not push them to their limits.

Same here

My CNBG are pellet hogs. They love eating MVP or Cargills or Optimal. Makes no difference to them. Over the past 4 and a half yrs I have feed different amounts and at different times of the day. It finally came down to how much money did I want to spend on the fish food per month. Today I feed three times per day using my 3 TH feeders and I feed for 2 sec throws. 10am, 4pm and 5pm which turns out to be around 5 1/2 sks per month +- or around 3 lbs +- per day per feeder. All this takes place in a pond that is a little over 3 acres and where my goal is to have healthy cnbg that will reproduce a lot of bg to feed my lmb. I also has some nice sized cnbg for catching and eating a few over the year. The cnbg would eat a lot more feed if it was provided. Like I said they are pellet hogs lol

For whatever reasons, I am on the opposite end from most folks...My feeder throws once a day, about 1/3 cup of Optimal Blue Gill and it takes my HBG from 15 to 30 minutes to clean it up. Occasionally, plenty of feed floats off and the minnows push it around until it sinks.

I guess the natural forage is so abundant that the pellets are just icing on the cake. My original stockers are bulging at the seams. I have recently put the feeder back in the shop and will only hand feed to lessen the amount of waste going into the pond. This means an occasional missed pellet meal on rainy days or when I can't get to the pond for whatever reason.

My original goal was to supplement feed, but now I worry about having left over pellets at the end of the season.

I don't see why you couldn't feed them as much as they would eat, up to your feed budget. Something tells me you should look into creating more natural forage.

My feeding is basically the same as QAs. I feed once a day. Never weighed it out, but it's about 3/4 of a solo cup by hand, every afternoon at the same time (or as close as I can).

I dont want my little pigs getting gorged on pellets so they'll be more likely to be the predators they are...yes...Panfish are predators too. It's one way I try to help keep everything in balance and there's never anything left after about 5 minutes. I make sure any fish being held in my holding cage get enough to eat, but there are a lot of GAMs and fry that find their way into the cage, so the sequestered get to feed on them as well. An interesting observation...I had a couple BG fry decide they liked it in the cage, now they're too big to get out, so now I can see how long it takes them to get up to 5 or 6 inches.

Thank yea fellas. My pond is nearly 30 years old and had gotten out of balance. Im in the process of trying to reduce the total amount of adult fish while trying to better balance the predator prey ratio and put some weight on each. After a couple years or so im finely seeing some positive results. Which is pretty cool.

My pond was stocked last August with 2in fingering northern bass. I feed my CNBg 5 times a day from 4 feeders on a 2 acre pond. Today I have some bass over 2 lbs . I over stocked the bream and with my extra feeding those babies are reproducing !

That's some good growth for Northern strain! Congrats!

How do I get pics to post

Zack - Here are recent instructions by RStringer.
Here's the best way I have been told about. Screen shot ur picture. Under the post click (switch to full reply screen) the click chose file ( got find it in ur phone under images the add file the done adding files. Then just submit. Took me a couple mistakes but just play with it if I can do it believe me you can.

I feed at 8 and 9 am and again at 6 and 7 pm at 14 second throws on a TH feeder placed about 70' out over the 3 acre pond on a dock. When it was cooler I fed 6 times a day instead of 4. Six times at 14 seconds was about a 50# bag of feed a week. A bag lasts more than a week now.

So about 2-3 pounds per acre per day.

I feed once a day - about 7am, and feed about 1.5 solo cups of Optimal Jr in my .2 acre pond. i throw it in small handfulls usually becasue i enjoy watching them attack it...then i usually make a raimbow swipe with the remaining amount in the cups. Literally in 1 minutes there is not a piece floating.

Am i answering my own question, by assuming that i'm not feeding enough?

I have 300 HBG, about 200 BG, 100 res, 50+/- mutt BG, one 10" largemouth, one 7" largemouth, 4-6 6-10" smallmouth, and 16 6" HSB.


feeding video from this morning 10/3- https://vimeo.com/364043535