Would like to know if there is a cheap way to grind these smaller fish up and put back as food for the remaining fish. I know some state lakes have these grinders but was wondering if a garbage disposal would work or would it be too much to grind up a 5 gal bucket of fish. I fin clip the real small fish, but a 5 to 7 in crappie I think are too big for fin clipping. Any other ideas on getting rid of these small fish?

I would put my money on an affordable meat grinder before the garbage disposal, mix with some veggie oil/flour or such for clumping purposes , then slow bake or dehydrate for top water feed at your discretion.

I have not done this, but let us know how it goes.

SUPER BASS-O-MATIC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RLHPaZUuyc

Ya think that might smell just a bit in the house....

Maybe cut them up into smaller pieces with strong scissors or very sharp knife, throw out pieces when feeder goes off. I'll bet the bass would learn to eat them.

I was looking at a 1 hp garbage disposal. But would like to know if the fishes skin would rap around cutter or grinding parts and not go down to the lake.

meat grinder for sure

Cull underperforming fish and train your predator to take the fillets. Requires a few weeks of training, I do this from Spring to Fall off my dock and have YP, SMB, HSB, WE and HBCP routinely taking fillets until I'm out. Keep culled fish in cages, net and prepare for feeding on site or you can prepare and freeze them ahead of time and bring them out to the pond during feeding, fish don't demonstrate any preference as long as they are thawed. My fillet fish average 130-140 WR - obviously makes an amazing difference in their growth. Additionally, I'm removing biomass from the fishery, and create a free supplemental feeding resource. Just requires a little effort and training.

Do you cut up and use the whole fish, including head/tail/guts, or just take the fillets? What do you do with parts you don't feed?

I use high quality utility shears, like Fiskars made in Finland, and clip fins first then go to work on the fish itself - depending on what I'm feeding that determines the cut. Walleye prefer a long, thin strip, YP and HBCP prefer nuggets, the SMB prefer something wide that takes a long time to fall in the water so they can hover under it and inhale, BG/HBG love fillets but need them smaller chunks to accommodate limited gape, and HSB hammer anything that hits the water. I feed everything but the fins - the HSB usually get the organs and the heads - I just need to toss them out 15' from the dock where they tend to cruise.

If one collects, fillets, then stores in the freezer it cuts down a lot of time and mess on the dock. Again I just clip the fins and cut the BG into various shapes with fillet knife and pack into 3# bags. Grab a bag from the freezer on the way to the farm and thaw in a bucket of pond water - in about 20 minutes they are ready to go.

I was reading this thread and thought how great of a horror novel this would make if you replaced us with aliens, and the fish with us. :-(. Poor little fish.

Tired today.

To serve man...

"To serve man..."

+1

What kind of smaller fish are you talking about. My dad taught me years ago if we were only catching small BG is to do a quick filet of the fish yes a small piece of meat and get a pot of boiling water going. Get a rolling boil and drop the fillet in until it turns white. Once you got the pile of meat cooked drain and you could even pat gently with a paper towel and put it in a bowl and refrigerate. Then mix up some cocktail sauce ( ketchup and horseradish) and dip like shrimp. We called it poor mans shrimp. No salt or pepper just O'l natural... Actually quite good...and I still make it to this day

Most green sunfish are 3 to 4 inches a few 5 but not many. The bullheads are 4 to 6 inches with a few 8 to 11 inches. the crappie are 6 to 7 1/2 inches. I tried to clean these and all I ended up with was a small thin potato chip sized peace of meat. They have no thickness to them till they get over 8 or 9 inches.

nehunter,

I find your idea rather intriguing. An an interesting read is this report on fish production by Swingle etal.

http://www.nativefishlab.net/library/textpdf/15116.pdf

One section deals with conversion efficiency of LMB which was researched by Prather. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1577/1548-8659%281950%2980%5B154%3AEOFCBY%5D2.0.CO%3B2

Conversion was determined from wet weight conversion of baitfish to LMB weight. It varies a lot but initially a mean conversion rate of ~7.5 lbs baitfish per 1 lb LMB gain was determined. Of interest, Prather found that selection could significantly reduce both the mean and variation but found that ~ 4 lbs per lb gain was a practical limit of efficiency. He worked with LMB < 6 ounce (less than 9.2"). I've not read Prather's paper and so don't know what role if any secondary inputs of fertility contributed. Specifically, did foods other than those fish weighed and fed contribute to gain? The fish were individually kept in circular pools and so I infer that secondary sources of food were quite limited or nonexistent.

At first blush 4 lbs of feed to 1 lb of gain may not seem all that extraordinary. But if one considers the dry weight of the bait fish the food conversion begins to take on a more remarkable efficiency. Not sure what the dry weights would be but one study on the dry weight relationship of nile tilapia found dry weights of ~25% of wet weight. So the conversion approaches 1 lb dry weight food per 1 lb wet weight gain. Not shabby at all IMHO.

Particularly for improving weights of panfish ground fish could be beneficial. It would ensure panfish would get a fair share as well as remove competition and open carrying capacity that is bound in the fish that are fed back to the pond. It seems a brilliant idea to me nehunter.

The same benefits might accrue from ground up LMB, as you eliminate small or skinny fish and feed the others.

Yes, I think so for all the same reasons. If those LMB had any size at all, however, I might only give them ground up LMB less their filets !!!

Disclaimer...I have not done this myself, but I read about it years ago and it seemed easy and effective.

Mount a wire basket on a pole that is placed in your pond, perhaps even off of a dock. Throw unwanted fish and leftovers from cleaned fish in the basket. As they break down, the "fish parts" will drop through the basket into the water below...where the surviving fishies will get the morsels.

The basket needs to be stout enough to keep the raccoons and birds out mainly.

Somewhat similarly...I once was at a pond where the owner had set up a peculiar "fish feeding station". He would pick up roadkill, raccoons mainly, and then using a stiff piece of wire run through their hind leg and attached to a dock, he would toss the roadkill out in the pond. The coons would float while they rotted and the flies would get to the top, exposed, part of the coon, lay eggs that would turn to maggots. Birds would peck the rotting carcasses and the maggots would fall into the water where the giant bluegills would eat them. Circle of life!

I read some where that a platform was made with a chicken wire top that was set over a pond and dead animals where then put on top for maggots. But I for one do not want dead animals in or around the water. Smell would be bad and the bones and hair would have to be removed sometime. But fresh ground fish that would be eaten right away, that I will try to get done.