Thinking about adding around 300 per acre of 2 to 3" cnbg this next month in late Feb. Cost will run around .30 per fish
why? Because I have seen low numbers of that sized cnbg in the pond in the past early springs or late winters in or around the 1st of March. Low numbers I believe are because of them being eaten on all winter. There is enough vegetation in the pond to offer some cover for these new fish. So I am sure I will get some survival. I have done this in the past and I'm ok with what I saw from that stocking. It should take some pressure off any early cnbg spawns. The pond has some large sized cnbg so I feel that I have plenty of the larger sized cnbg. I just want the lmb/hsb to gain some weight after winter. I also added some GSH last year and may have gotten some survival of those but I am not sure so I plan on adding some more of those 4" ones around the same time as the cnbg additions. Early stocking of these might provide some spawning this year. I will follow up in April with Tp. The ponds cnbg are feed with 3 feeders
yr round for the most part. The whole purpose of this is to provide plenty of food for the lmb/hsb. I think the 5 to 6" cnbg are around .50 each maybe more so I would get fewer numbers of forage sized fish for the same buck. But I wonder if I should go this route because my lmb are good sized but my hsb would have trouble eating a cnbg that sized.

Maybe someday I will have a growout forage pond

What happened with the growout forage pond project, Tracy? I know you were planning it a couple years ago.

Frank, I have been wanting to build an area where I can duck hunt and raise forage together at the same time. A place that I can flood and drain into a trap area to collect forage for the pond. Been looking into building a place to raise crawfish. I've been looking for the right guy to help me lay out a plan. Hoping just a levy or two in the right place located in the bottom land for this project. If I can get this done where I can plant food for the crawfish, something like rice maybe, and then flood it, add some bg and then duck hunt it and then drain collect all and then do it all over again. May not be able to reach this goal but this plan has been on my mind from the time of purchase of the farm. Took a contract out this year to sell some timber and take some of the proceeds to build this project if it can be done as I would like. In the meantime I hope to continue growing some nice lmb/hsb by providing lots of forage to them. At this time the pond may be in balance or close to it with mixed sizes of lmb, cnbg.