Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Fly Fishing & Other Fish Species My Yellow Perch!

OK,
These guys are fast becoming pets. Apparently they were feed trained, and are fantastically active eaters. They don't come to the surface often, but watching them go after the sinking pellets is a great deal of fun! They just love the Aquamax 500, and come in fast and furious to get it.

There is quite a variety of sizes, which is surprising. Ranging from maybe 6" up to at least 9". They were all stocked at 3-4 inches last fall. I am assuming the smaller ones are males?

They are all fairly fat at this point as I am pumping them up for next spring's spawn. What is interesting is the water temp is down to 48, and they are still very active. They are typically waiting for me at 8AM and 5PM. I cannot get them to come at any other time, which to me I find amazing. It doesn't seem to correlate with the angle of the sun, or even if the sun is visible though they are most active on partly-cloudy days.

I am really hoping for a major YP spawn event next spring to keep up with the healthy-looking BC so ultimately they will feed the WE at more advanced sizes. Interestingly the BC have no clue that the AquaMax is good eating. The perch will snag it from right in front of them.

I thought I would need Koi to see this underwater world, but the perch are doing a fine job of entertaining.

-Mark

Glad to hear it. They have a lot of good attributes if you can control their numbers. Beautiful golden yellow color, nice tasting, easy to catch, and good reproducers. Wait until they get to be 13 or 14 inches!

Kinda hard to eat those "pets" but in the long run, you'll have some nice fish dinners more than a few times a year.

Cecil, I was trying to hold off for a week or two to break a bag of my perch out. but your description of them got me drooling. We're having a fish-fry this week .

Don't tell 'em it was my idea!

Believe it or not the best tasting fish I've ever had so far were tilapia i just harvested out of my outdoor aquaponics tank. Used a commercial lemon pepper/bread crumb mix and baked them. Nice white flakey meat.

Yeah, I may have a little trouble eating the perch. My son has also told me in no uncertain terms that he will NEVER eat a fish out of our pond. He already thinks of them as fish in his aquarium, and he has a deep caring for animals.

However, I LOVE fresh fish, especially beer-breaded and baked over a charcoal grill. I can ignore those little beady eyes staring up at me while the electric fillet tool goes to town.

Gosh, that makes me sad just writing it :-(.

-Mark

How old is your son? Please don't tell us he's 25!

You could tell your son if he was a small bait fish the perch wouldn't have a problem eating him.

He is 7, almost 8, and too smart for his own good! I have a feeling that once he gets a taste of fresh fish, he will be diving into the pond with a trident.

Cecil, did you purge them (not feeding for a couple days)? My wife and I plus friends can empty a tray of tilapias at a buffet... but I like a little cole slaw, fries and good old hot corn bread on the side.. DANG IT, I'm drooling again .

Stopped feeding them for a few days but they were off feed anyway due to the colder water.

Geesh, 24 degrees this morning and the perch were all lined up begging for food! They are a little slower, but I cannot imagine the water being warmer than 40ish. Of course I fed them. Who can resist those little beady eyes?

Cody feeds his hydrated pellets through the ice. Right Bill?

Usually I quit pellet feeding (Aqua_Max) in the first two weeks of Oct. I put 10 to 15lbs of minnows in around then. This is why, I was told that pellet food is harder to digest when the water gets colder. The longer it sits in the fish, the more chance of bacterial deaths.

Anybody know for sure??? By this time (Oct),some pellets are washing up to the bank. But the minnows are hard to be found.

We've caught some really nice fat YP,BG and a few "eyes" on minnows during the winter when the pond wasn't frozen.

Hang loose I have the same experience as well here in Ontario. I am about 10*c south of you. We have a camp on Lake Onaping and it is always 5-10 degrees cooler there than here.

I found the same thing around Oct first the pellets start to wash to shore and the minnows disappear from shore. This year the perch stopped eating about a week before the minnows stopped. When the minnows have free pellets with out having to compete with the perch the whole pond looks like it is being rained on. The little minnows can't get the pellet in one bite and nibble. The little nubble's on the floating pellets looks like rain.

Its been about a month with no feed and my son and I might get a nice day to drop a line in. Had a hard time catching the bigger perch all year and just caught the yearling perch.

Cheers Don.

In cold water around 40F (4-5C) fish digestion of dry pellets takes longer and the chances are greater for poor digestion and food decay in the stomach. However with moist foods, fish digest the food normally and properly similar to them eating natural foods. The difference I think is the extra time it takes for the pellets to hydrate and soften in the stomach and the extra time delay causes problems. Another contributing factor is how many dry pellets the fish eats in cold water. The more pellets eaten in cold water the more digestion problems are likely to occur to worst case fish deaths as reported by some YP farms.

I would bet on top of slow digestion that as the pellets hydrate, they swell. In colder water they don't swell as fast and thus the fish eats more than it should. Swell in stuffed tummy == not good.

I am stopping feeding now, have to bring the bucket up so I don't feed the furry wildlife. Thanks.

Liquidsquid,

Have you actually seen that they don't swell as much in cooler water or is this an assumption?

Bill, is there such a thing as a moist "fish" pellet food? I've never even thought about it before until you mentioned "moist foods"?

Plus who makes it if you know. Thanks

Just an assumption that it doesn't swell as quickly, as most things that are cold. It was a guess at why fish eating dry food vs moist would be more detrimental.

I am betting it has to do with all animals and worse with cold blooded animals with high feed conversion. On the farm here if the barn is not warm in the -10c days the pigs feed conversion was very poor. They used a good bunch of the energy of the feed just to stay warm.

Fish feed conversion is 1-1 far better then pigs or cattle. This being said as the water cools down the energy the fish need to survive is much much less. Fish are cold blooded and do not need to stay as warm. When feed pellets high in protein the pellets will take much much longer to digest because they just do not need the energy. The feed then will just sit in their belly's way too long. Leaving the door open to problems with digestion.

Cheers Don.

There are specialty moist foods for fish. One of the original brands was Oregon Moist Diet which was primarily a very high protein trout diet and was used a lot in the early days of research for pellet training LMB. It is no longer available. A few other brands have replaced OMD. Cecil, myself, and a few others make our own soft pellets by using Aquamax with a little water and soak time. It is often referred to here as hydrating pellets. It has been discussed several times on this forum. This is from my post of Nov 10, 2002 thread:
"Aquamax blue-bag will hold its consistency when coated/soaked with a little water. Abt. 1/2 c water to 1 qt pellets and shaken till all water is absorbed. Allowed to stand 1-2 hr. Now the pellets can be rolled, pinched or molded into softened balls and many hesitant fish will accept this form of food. Larger pellets for big fish can be made by molding several pellets together. Small fish can eat a larger pellet that has been softened. Many fish reject the hard pellets due to texture. Soften the food, make it similar texture to other live things fish eat and now they will learn quicker and easier to eat pellets.

I have an article in Pond Boss Magazine May-Jun 2008 about softening Amax pellets: "THE SOFTER SIDE OF FEEDING FISH." Cody explains details how to soften hard pellets plus the benefits and varied uses for moist feed.

More details provided by Cecil Baird of softening in this thread:
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=87873&fpart=1
Note that CB1 in the beginning mentions when the pellets are squeezed it removes air from the pellets.

See this thread where Sprkplug and I on Sep 04 2012 discuss hydrating pellets and the CB1 bag soaking method.
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=305270

Russ from NewYork has adapted the softening of Amax pellets to make them look like mealworms for pellet training crappie:
" April 18 - May 19 - started tossing in pellets, Aquamax 5D05, but they were not interested. Started thinking that perhaps BCP are sight/texture feeders and decided to try and make the pellets look like mealworms. By May 19th, the BCP were feeding aggressively on "mealworm" pellets. Here is how I make mealworm pellets.

After referencing a previous PondBoss article on artificial feeds and feeding, I settled on using a mixture of 20 grams of pellets with 13 grams of water. The pellets and water are placed in a small plastic bottle and shaken for 1-2 minutes. The pellet/gravy mixture is then poured out onto a plate, leveled out and left to sit for 2 hours so the pellets can absorb all the water.
After 2 hours I make a pellet pie crust by placing a plastic sandwich bag over the mixture and rolling it out with a wooden rolling pin. The pellet crust is maybe 1/16" thick.
Next I take a dough/pastry scraper and slice the crust into 1/8" wide by 1/2 to 3/4" long strips....my mealworm pellets. The whole rolling/cutting process takes less than 10 minutes."

Great info Bill!!! I'm going to try it with the (maybe) quart of fish food I have left till spring. If my grandma was still alive, she'd love helping me do it this way...

Sometimes I think my wife would like to use that wooden rolling pin on me though .

Note the homemade hydrated pellets are only good for 1 maybe two days before they start to mold. After the first feeding I put the soft pellets in the refrigerator. When you take them out, place them in the microwave for 15-20 seconds (1-2 cups). They will usually become more pliable when heated. Heating also kills most of the bacteria that have developed. I have found that heating the water to almost boiling used for softening tends to slow the bacteria growth on uneaten 2 day old pellets. Hot water also helps to initially soften the pellets faster.

Thank again Bill.... Have to re-group now! One more question , have you ever frozen hydrated pellets then thawed?

""...have you ever frozen hydrated pellets then thawed?"" Yes, good point - the hydrated pellets can be frozen. Condition and consistency after thawing depends on amount of moisture before freezing, experiment with them; but generally freezing them for long storage works pretty good. I have squeezed and rolled the soft pellets in to larger pieces then froze them, that also works pretty good.

Bill, are you talking about hand rolling into pellets or rolling into little logs and cutting them up and then freezing? Both ways sound viable.