Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain LMB Pellets

I was wondering if anybody ever tried an all bass lake and how they did with them only eating pellets.

The rub would be how to control the reproduction of the LMB to prevent overcrowding within the first year or so after the existing LMB can spawn.

The LMB would need to be feed-trained, but I don't know if the second generation would take to feed.

Don't know the chances of success on this one, but if you feel like trying.

The other thing is that if you could only have one sex of LMB, you could prevent reproduction.

LMB have been reported to "top out" at 6lbs or so if only fed pellets. IIRC that was before Aquamax LArgemouth was avilable - I suspect with it's bigger pellet and improved nutrition that LMB would get bigger than 6 pounds, but still not do as well as they would on pellets plus forage.

Single sex feedtrained LMB would likely be the way to get the most big bass action in a small BOW, though.

Cage feed them until they can be sexed and only plant the females.

Would the 10 pounds of food = one pound of flesh apply here? Because that a huge amount of feed to get a pond full of bass to 6 lbs. Or is the feed so good that it takes much less? With this being their only food source perhaps they would just sit and wait all day for the feeder to go off, and get even fatter? I suppose a predator is always on the hunt tho!

I have seen this in cattle. We wanted to supplement them with a high quality feed, two times a day. Well they figured out the time of day and would start fighting for position at the feed trough, then eat and leave. Well they liked the feed so much that soon they never left to eat graze! They would just stand and wait 5+ hours for the second feeding when they could have went to graze, they actually lost weight until we cut them to 1 feeding a day. This probably in no way applies to fish but thought I would share.

No it's about 2 to 1 for the feed ratio due to the lack of water. From my experience the bass did get lazy but they also feed on other things. If they did not why would they hit lures?

I knew BG feed was 2:1 but was not sure about bass feed. Thanks for the info.

An idea for comment:

If a pond was stocked with only mixed sex bass and on full pellet rations, I would think that some of the YOY fish would get on feed too even without being "trained", maybe even higher percentages than a lake with forage fish available. Those that don't get onto pellets will be smaller and stand less of a chance of making it to adults than their pellet eating siblings too.

More of the feed would be going toward the priority fish rather than through the less efficient conversion through forage fish.

Wow i am really glad i found this site. Lots of good ideas. I live in south florida and have a 1/4 acre pond i will eventually test this out on. If successful maybe i will transplant the idea to some family owned land in brookesville.


-Shmeddie

Good point, Ryan. Eat or be eaten.

It takes 8-10 lbs. of forage to produce 1 lbs. of bass. I have never seen a feed with better protein profiles than the real thing and believe the feed bill for a pellet only bass pond would be tremendous to achieve growth and not maintenance. Catfish convert at 2/1 on even low protein feeds, but they are somewhat omnivorous, like me. In my experience with feed trained bass we only kept them through year 2 because of the expense, and that was on maintenance rations most of the year to use as brood fish. When those fish came in contact with live prey they would go off the feed until the prey was reduced. As far as the spawn of feed trained bass, I believe they would be eaten by mamma, pappa, and brother before they overpopulated with no forage. A few may self train but not enough to keep the pond stocked. I would view that situation much like a put and take catfish pond. I have seen feed trained bass fry go from thousands in a tank to 3 fish in 2 months, while being fed, through cannibalism. This will happen readily if the fish are not graded every few days to keep them at the same size.

-HH

HH - Welcome. Good advice and experiences, thanks for sharing that info.