Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations lone lmb feeds with my cnbg

How strange is this... Stocked 50 Florida lmb at 4-5 inches about 4 months ago. Those I have caught are all 11-12 inch long now. They WERE pellet trained fingerlings. I feed everyday from the th feeder and can walk on the cnbg there is so many!! I have one lone lmb that just cruises the surface at feeding time along with the thousands of cnbg and I watch him eat pellets with them. NEVER more than one so I assume it is the same fish. The cnbg are about 7-8 inch long and show no fear of him at all. He looks very healthy but why are there not more bass showing up...only the one? Any ideas? Is this odd? Just making an observation.

James some of my LMB eat pellets and they are not pellet trained .... They trained themselves I guess

Flame,

I've often wondered about this. I know you can train LMB and other apex predators pretty much from birth to eat pellets but can you train them to ignore their instinct to seek natural forage when released into a BOW full of good natural forage? Kind of like raising a kitten on cat food but the first time it's outside it catches and eats a bird and is not hungry later. Next day that dang cat is scratching at the door to get out instead of begging for cat food. I have no idea if that idea is right or applicable, just something I've wondered about.

Another "I've always wondered"...

My understanding is that when fish farms pellet train fish, like LMB, there is a significant number of mortalities. Question is did the "best" fish live or die? Was the instinct for natural forage in the ones that didn't make it so strong that they would rather die than eat inanimate objects floating on top of their tank? What if the fish farm observed which fingerlings refused to eat pellets and rescued them and raised them in a tank with natural forage. If you brought those two groups of fish back together in a BOW full of forage, which would out perform the other? When you bass fish, how often do you use a bait that just sits there? Which group of fish is more likely to go after a bait you're retrieving?

Just something I've wondered about....

Sorry if this is a hijack!

Fish behavior is an interesting subject . More later on the subject . There is IMO a higherarchy of needs that control some of the behavior . In some order they are , air , fear , food , reproduction and stress avoidance .

Interesting Bill... I will add I often see other lmb busting the shoreline chasing cnbg and on several occasions knocked baitfish all the way onto the bank! Some of the lmb I have caught were on crankbaits and buzzbaits but....the largest one I have caught came from under a cork fishing for cnbg with a black piece of rubber worm about the size of my feed or a kernel of corn.I can't see how any of these bass got this big without eating some bluegill. I just checked my perch/minnow trap yesterday and there was probably 50 1 inch cnbg in it and no minnows....oh, and one HUGE red swamp crawdad that measured 9 inch long!!