Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations My Personal Observation of My F1's

I have a new pond built in Feb. '05 stocked with both Bluegill in April and F1 bass June 14, 05. I have been pellet feeding since day one of stocking. I have been observing the fish daily from both feeding times and just walking around the banks and have noticed I have one school of bass that eagerly wait for the pellet food and are between 8"-12' with about a 2" girth across their backs which is amazing, but there is another school that seem to only feed on minnows and insects, never even trying the pellet feed. They swim in a school and never come near the pellet fed school of bass. The major difference is the school of bass eating only natural forage are in the 6" size. Is this pretty typical?

RLewis,

I don't know what is typical, but can describe my experience with an ongoing experiment with F1's...

Completed the renovation of a 2 acre pond one year ago, stocked with CNBG,fatheads, and 1 grass carp. F1's stocked this spring along with Tilapia. No artificial feeding whatsoever. No fishing whatsoever, either, but careful observation has shown very fat, consistent 12 inch F1's this fall. Nothing but natural forage, no fertilizers either. Thus far, at least, I've shown myself that artificial feeding can be replaced with forage, e.g. Tilapia supplementing CNBG.

My main reason for this pond was to try to find a way to raise an aggressive LMB that was catchable, unlike the Florida strain LMB in my much larger artificially fed pond, which are uncatchable.

The consistent rapid growth without any artificial feeding that I've seen thus far in the F1's is most encouraging...but the other part of the test, on catchability, won't be exercised until next year.

RLewis :

When pellet traind LMB are placed in a pond with live prey over time a large % stop eating or greatly reduce the amount of pellets eaten. There have been several posts on this aspect of pellet trained LMB. Some will however keep eating feed if available. It is not easy to keep pellet trained LMB on feed over winter in this area as it requires them to come up into coldest surface water to feed which is contrary to their biology. They seek a more stable water temp. at depth and feed there to the extent they feed. On warmer days they may come up to feed shallow. I hope this helps . ewest

Thanks to both of you for your responses. Basically I need to monitor my feedings during the colder months and adjust accordingly. I plan on adding more flatheads if for nothing more than a treat for whatever feels like feeding on them. Thanks again. Robert Lewis

I put F1's in my 1/4 acre pond June 14th too. I haven't thrown a lure at them but several look like 12' footballs. I put them in with small redear (same time) and was surprised to see that the redear spawned. Seems awfully late to me. I didn't put in any other forage so maybe later we can compare ponds.