Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Raising Forage and Bait Trout as forage option

Interesting. No a trout will not grow that fast even on a supplemented diet. The fastest a pellet feed trout will grow according to the literature I have is 1.5 inches per month. That doesn't sound like much but it can actually be a lot when you consider how much weight they can put on with that length increase.

My fish put on a maximum of 4 to 6 inches from March to November. I get them at 10 to 12 inches so by the following fall they are 14 to 18 inches. One more year and the brooks will be 18 to 21 inches plus and another year is anyone's guess if they would survive that long. Rainbows are the fastest growers following by browns and then brooks.

I threw in a twister tail jig today again which has the hook cut off to do some observation of the brook trout as they either hit it and hold on briefly or come up shallow to hit it. There may be an at least on two year old 18 incher but most are running 14 to 16 inches. I'm just hoping there are more live fish than it appears. I've had about 12 floaters out of a hundred in the year I've had them. Not all dead trout float to the surface but I can't imagine having a good amount of them not float up if they died.

I just hope the mink I blew away this spring had not been dining for a while. My "edumacated" guess is no, as I didn't find any remains on the bank and I would think the trout would be quite fast to catch. It would seem the mink was more likely to be after the numerous frogs on the bank. I could kick myself for not getting a extra 20 or 40 to make up for morts! My supplier has much smaller brook yearlings and most likely the larger fish would stress them if I added them to the pond.

The colors right now on these fish are outstanding! Very brilliant reds and oranges! Unfortunately it would be hard to get pictures right now. However this winter I will coax them up into my ice hole in my ice shanty and will get some good pictures.

holy cow, we got a trout in one of our ponds. How he made it I have no idea well into the 80's at times in the pond. Great Do of course b/c we get full turnover of pond about once a day. But man that was a surprise.

No spring seepage or anything?

We used to have a poster on here that put steelhead into his pond. Even though he ran well water into the pond it wasn't really enough and he said they just hunkered down on the bottom and refused to bite. At first he was sure he lost them. However come fall and they became active again.

I was in PA the last few days hunting. Tried fishing for a half hour but caught no trout. I did see several rises by what I thought were trout. So I am hoping with the cooler than normal summer we had, we had a bumper crop of hold over brown trout and perhaps a few rainbows as well. The water temp was 62 degrees on the surface.

That is amazing that one or your rainbows held over Greg... It would be cool to try to select rainbows who could do that and then breed them. After a few generations of doing that, you may be able to put together a very warm water tolerant strain. Cecil... I could see a market for such a fish! Don't you think?

With brown trout they can be there and you won't hardly know it. They are a wary and stealthy species.



My state allegedly used a strain of rainbows known as the New London strain (from a state hatchery in Ohio with that name) for broodstock. According to them the strain was able to handle warmer water than a typical rainbow, but I have my doubts from personal experience. They are now fiddling around with hatching eggs from Trout Lodge which is much more economical than keeping broodstock half way down the state, and hatching and rearing the offspring at two different locations due to iron issues.

I heard a rumor about some brook trout in PA that were more warm water tolerant but was never able to track it down.

Never heard about it myself... I'll check around and see though...

Here are some photos from Friday of the "trout creek". You can see it looks very different in the fall! Much much lower water level, to the point where it barely runs, leaves all over the surface and a brown rather an a nice aqua blue color.



Spring time:

No sprign since right beside creek. Yes love to selcet those warm water ones to breed.