I love the cover of the pond boss magazine for this recent issue with the waterfall. It has inspired me to try building my own. I recently read the article that eric west wrote about live forage vs pellet trained fish. The subject has been on my mind after watching on t.v. a man that raises rainbow trout. He raises the trout in a concrete raceway that is fed from a nearby stream. He originally fed the trout pellets but found the flavor of the meat to be not quite as good as a wild trout. He began experimenting and found that he could raise water cress in a field next door and let the water from the water cress circulate into his raceway bringing all the food needed for his trout. The water cress is full of small bugs and things trout like. He claims his fish gain weight faster and taste better. It has me thinking about how this idea could be used in a pond that normally feeds pellets. I would like to hear from anyone that has ideas.

Amount of natural food items coming out of the water cress or a plant community will depend on the fertility of the plant area and amount or area of plant growth. This ratio of plant biomass to invertebrate density is important for the amount of fish production possible.

I found the name of the show it is called river cottage gone fishing but havnt found the episode on you tube. I agree with you Bill it appears he is raising acres of water cress and not a huge number of trout. I will try to find the episode so if you are interested you can watch it on the internet. My only question is can any of this be applied to what the people on pond boss are doing?

It would have to be species that can do well on an invertebrate diet. BG could possibly work, most other species I think wouldn't benefit nearly as much. Then you have to factor in the time, effort and money, along with the acreage needed to create such a system...

I know nothing about trout.

BUT:
I think the usual answer is "it all depends". My personal belief is that fish like BG and most other sunfish will do better on pellets. I think there is too much non digestible waste in bugs to really help a bigger fish. The same could also be true when feeding on smaller fish. How much of a smaller fish is digestible when we consider guts, fins, teeth, hair and eyeballs? With the exception of inert materials, the pellet delivers more for the buck(IMO). That would be especially true if the pellet is Menhaden(oily) versus plant based.

Sunfish will do just fine of plant based but seem to do even better on fish based pellets.

All of this seems to make sense until I see the pic of the huge Redear posted on Big Bluegill. That sucker probably never saw a high protein pellet and redears, which get larger than BG, are rarely pellet trainable.

Another exception to my thoughts is LMB. Yeah, they can be somewhat pellet trained but keeping them on pellets doesn't always work. And yet, they sometimes become enormous on just eating bluegills and other fish.

""My only question is can any of this be applied to what the people on pond boss are doing?"
For high carrying capacity ponds and with plenty of land the water could be passed through a wetlands for purification and then back into the pond. Many types of food organisms could be grown in the wetlands to be carried into the pond by the return water flow. I think a few unique members currently do this to some degree.

Jim- a member from Canada has a waterfalls on his pond and he gets stream spawning fish (shiners) to reproduce in the current from the water falls.

Floating Island International creates wetlands that both clean the water and help increase food production. They say 250 sq feet is equivalent to a 1 acre wetland.

Also, re pellets vs natural food, natural food is mostly water, which is why it takes about 10 lb of them to cause a 1 lb increase in predator weight. For pellets it is closer to 1 to 1.

Not saying pellets are always better, just that they have certain advantages for certain fish. Recent research posted here earlier showed that pellet trained bass must be acclimated to taking natural food in order to survive in a BOW.

Buy Pond Boss mag.

More coming on pelleted feeds and what fish need for growth. There is a lot of new/ongoing research on pelleted feed and its contents. Much on the issue of plant based vs animal/fish based ingredients. Not going to let the cat out of the bag yet.

Food for thought - what a fish needs in the way of nutrition has been established over eons through natural selection (genetics and adaptation) on natural foods. Pelleted feeding is more efficient for the fish as it does not have to expend energy on capture (recall bioenergetics - growth = food in less energy used). The real question is what do the fish need and can it be made economically.

Hoping to read more into the effects/compositions of pelleted feed intended for cold water periods.

That is coming also.

I know someone who is -- or was? -- pushing the idea of using insect larvae to replace some of the fish protein in pellets. He said this would be cheaper and more humane than killing fish, especially as fish become scarcer, though he did admit that 100 percent larvae was not as effective as 100 percent fish. Still, his research indicated that half to two-thirds of the fish protein could be replaced without ill effect on growth & health.

Is it possible that we all have enough insects to feed our fish just above the pond.. I imagine in the southern states even more so than northern states.

It seems some do it yourselfer from this forum could rig up a bug light of some type with system to temporarily disable the wings, coat with something that disables or gums up the 'lift' on the wings, or even just use a fan (solar powered charging of batteries during day and run cycle at night?) to blow them down a discharge chute into the pond?

If that got worked out then everyone who wanted to supplement the forage base in their pond would always turn to the 'insect' feeder idea first since after upfront costs all future feed bills would be related to cost of running or repairing the device and not paying for the insects.

Research and cost towards pellet feeders and feed bags would be only if a new pond owner wanted to supplement above what an insect feeder (or more than 1 ) could provide.

Of course if we could attract the unwanted insects (biting flies, mosquitos) more proportionally than others that would be icing on the cake.

CC, you and I are on the same page. I brought up exactly that point at the PB Conference. However, I was told by someone experienced that the weight of the insects, even hundreds or thousands, just isn't enough to really feed fish well. It is amazing how light insects are, especially considering all the chitin, wings, water, etc.

CC, do a search on a BoJo fish light.

Another thread on feeding Japanese beetles

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=334789

Thanks sprkplug, I'm aware of several commercial 'bug lights' but what I always thought was their downfall is they depended on the bugs to come around to the light and then what makes them get into the water? They accidentally fall in? They rest on the surface for a second? Fish jump out of the water to snap them up?

It seems the light part is great, but we need a part II where they either get zapped by a force field, chemical, paralysis agent, and fall in (or at least a very high percentage of them fall in) or they are mechanically swept or blown in.

Is it a minority or majority of the bugs that come to fly around that light that end up being eaten by the waiting fish below?

The mosquito attracting stands that use burning propane to produce heat and CO2 attract bugs very nicely, but they wouldn't work if it wasn't for the fan that blew them into a bag. I was thinking of the same idea where heat, CO2, light something attracts and they also get propelled into the water.

Hmm...

CC, a bojo light has a "weedeater" mechanism that knocks the bugs down into the water. It doesn't just attract, it dispenses!

I have a Bojo, it's fun, but don't think it's doing much to impact fish body condition, rather just entertaining me. Similar maybe to my Green Monster light...blast to watch with a beer on the dock on a warm June evening watching Tstorms in the distance kinda thing. I've been able to observe BCP zooplankton grazing behavior I never would have otherwise...crazy swimming upside down, on their sides, etc. It's also fun to feed YOY BG or FHM around the lights at night - WE, BCP, SMB and YP come in and you can observe them ambushing the forage, which is pretty cool. Recommend them both to anyone who owns a dock - cheap entertainment at the very least.