Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding Optimal feed

I'm not affiliated with Optimal feed but I thought I would pass on that I have really liked it. We're feeding the Starter feed #3 in a new lake project and the Blue Gill Jr in existing ponds. They have turned on to the Bluegill Jr quickly despite its different appearance. Throws well out of our Texas Hunter feeders as well.

It's a good feed. I like it.

I think I'm on the other end of the scale. I believe I may stop feeding it. Last week I fished the pond for a few hours. I have primarily a YP and SMB pond. I added a few HBG a year and a half ago, so that the grandkids would have something to catch in the middle of the summer days. Last week I was only catching HBG after the sun had been up for a while. The HBG are doing very well, for not having been in the pond all that long.
My problem is, the SMB and the YP haven't grown much at all. I'm trying to keep as many HBG as I can, but they might be out reproducing the YP and for sure the SMB. Maybe I'll go back to Purina. I just don't remember which AM size to go with.

Switching foods probably won't help. If the HBG are eating all the food before the YP/SMB see it, then what? If you are saying that the HBG won't like to eat the other brand of food, what will you do if the YP/SMB don't eat it either?

Either feed more so the HBG get their fill and there is food left over for the other fish, or feed a larger pellet size (like Optimal Bass food. I don't know if a larger pellet will help, but I know in my pond the bass don't want to eat a smaller pellet, they will eat a clump of small pellets, but not an individual one.

I don't "see" a YP eating the food, but I know they are by the splash they make at the surface of the pond. They rocket up from down deep, start their turn, grab a pellet and rocket back down.

The only way people would take my Optimal away would be over my cold, dead body.........

Makes sense Scott. Maybe I need to run the feeder longer. I'll also keep removing the HBG. Looks like it was a mistake (for me) to add them. I was thinking possibly some of the other feed might sink, giving the YP a better chance of getting some.
FYI, I changed from 6 seconds, twice a day, to 10 seconds. The feed still disappears in less than a minute.
Thanks
Jeff

your fish are starving! Feed them! Does the timer not go past 10 sec? How about 30 sec?

Jeff. try 20 seconds the next time you are out there. The HBG might be hogging all the pellets and keeping the YP away from the food because they might be more aggressive. If the food still disappears in the same amount of time, immediately do a test throw for 10 seconds. If it still disappears just as fast, do another 10 second test throw. Keep repeating until at some point you will see a decreased feeding response. Then set the next scheduled feeding event for that length of throw time. Keep it up for a week and see if you have YP coming to the feed then.

I have no problem with getting the YP to come up to the surface for feed, but I found out that in my pond, feeding them during low light (within an hour of sunrise/sunset) had the best feeding response. Throw feed out at high noon and you'd wonder where all the fish went.

Now, maybe if I were to have a high noon feeding time, they might get used to it. I don't know.

I always feed at sunup and sundown. The YP I was feeding last year were all full of Optima when I cleaned them. It wasn't that long ago that 6 seconds left food floating for too long, and it floated against the bank. I still get some if the wind is right. The FHM work on the food against the shore. I'll start adding 10 second increments, and see when it slows down. The HBG have exploded in size and weight. That's exactly what Optima is supposed to do. I'm not sure how much recruitment I've had with the HBG. I don't want very many, as I really prefer to eat the YP.

I don't think any of my fish are starving. There's still FHM and GSH in fair #s in the pond. Three big sunken cedar trees out where the feeder sends the feed. Timer goes to a minute..

I'll be back up next week, and see how many seconds I have to add.
Thx

I hand feed one gallon of Optimal in a one+ acre pond every evening. When I feed them dry food, the gills (and bass of course) hit it hard and then the gills spit it out nearly 100% of the time. They keep cruising and do it again and again. (The bass, cats, perch, and Amur are total pigs and they just keep hitting the food repetitively)

The past 2-3 weeks I've hydrated the gallon of food and have noticed they still aggressively hit it and about 90% of the time they keep it in their mouths, and consume it, before hitting another pellet. After hydrating, I wait until the pellets swell up about 50% (before they get too mushy) just before I feed them.

The softer pellets are clearly being held on to longer (and permanently by the gills) than the hard pellets are.

Yep!

I'm going to try hydrated tonight. I'm also having problems with the BG not wanting to hang on to the dry Optimal BG pellet. Interesting, I did not notice this problem when feeding Sportsman Choice last summer or Optimal BG Jr last fall.

This is very interesting. I would like to investigate this a bit more.

If you are experiencing this issue and are willing to answer a few questions please PM me!

"Pick and spit", "pellet rejection", very common with our native BG, not so much the hybrids. I have watched a single BG take in and spit out the same pellet multiple times. Sometimes they get it down eventually, while other times they give up and move to another pellet. Also see larger, (8-9") fish do the same. They do clean up the feed completely, but not on the first feeding wave.

Hydrating it first really helps reduce pellet rejection in my experience, would love to see a softer pellet somehow.

So I just came up from feeding hydrated Optimal BG. All I can say is WOW! what a difference hydrating made. I saw ZERO rejections. I am going to increase my feed amount by 50% right away and probably more as I see how it goes. I lacked a "recipe" for hydrating so I went with 3 parts pellets to 1 part water. Moisture content was ok. What ratio do you guys use?

Happy to help anyway I can. Shoot me A PM with your questions.

Everything in my pond eats it like candy.

Bill, I don't really have a ratio, I just add water until it looks right, then let it sit for 2-3 minutes, then stir it up and let it set another couple minutes. My experience is that it will soften much faster than aquamax, which my bluegills also ate much better when softened.

I totally believe that softened pellets give my fish an edge. I understand the difficulties involved with producing, packaging, shipping, and storing soft pelleted feed, but I would love to give it a try if available. I hand feed only, so that gives me an edge over mechanical feeders in this regard.

Thanks Tony,

I noticed that the Optimal really hydrates fast as well. I figure as long as the pellets stay pellet shaped and don't turn to mush, I'm good to go with water content. Maybe I will stick to the 3 to 1 pellet to water ratio. Even the little 2 to 3 inch BG joined in the feast tonight as they ripped the pellets to pieces.

Yall are spoiling these fish by hydrating it..haha. i have swapped back and forth from aquamax and optimal. the fish really get used to eating a particular size and shape. it took my fish a while when i first changed to optimal, but now they take it instantly when i swap back to it.

a side note: i have a cage that i put fish in from time to time. it has a feeder ring floating in it. i noticed that the optimal will float much longer than am, which i think is a good thing especially when training young fish.

i can put the empty cage in the pond and throw feed in it daily. the bg get to hanging out in there, probably for security. the eventually get too large to escape. i have a bunch of 3-4" bg in there now that trapped themselves.

It's really rare for feed at my pond to be spit out. I've seen it but it is unusual. Never had it happen with Optimal.

Scott69, talk to sprkplug about fish keying in on a certain sized pellet. When I was there last, he was feeding only Aquamax 500. Throw out Aquamax 600 and the fish wouldn't touch it. Strictly pellet size.

Update....I am now feeding 200% of what I was feeding before I started hydrating the Optimal BG chow. The fish finished in 3.5 minutes tonight. Lots of YP showing up now as well as more BG, and, of course, my 4 or 5 CC. Looks like I will need to bump the amount again. I only want to supplemental feed so I will work towards feeding what is consumed in 5 minutes once a day.

Thanks again guys for turning me on to the hydrating strategy. I swear I can actually see the fish growing every day!...I also hydrate the 3 mm Skretting I feed the tiny guys and they really appreciate it! (I think the little guys would actually prefer the Optimal BG Jr but there is no way I would feed 50 lbs in my small pond in a season. I sure hope they come out with smaller bags for us small pond ownwers!)

I was hand feeding optimal last night and was feeling guilty. I think I unintentionally 'domesticated' my painted turtles!! Before you could not get within 20 feet of the turtle and they were gone to the bottom. Now once the feed starts hitting the water they are actually swimming towards me!! They just stop and pop their head out and watch to see where the next pellet might land and then they swim like mad over to it to try to grab it before a zooming RES or YP comes up and snaps it out of the water from in front of them.

On one hand I'm glad they like the food, on the other hand, if the turtles and their young only learn how to eat fish pellets they may not do so well on their own in another pond

I'm sharing a little praise of Optimal.
Backstory is we've owned the 1/4 acre pond since 2009. It originally had only YP, LMB, and GC (2 big ones). As expected YP were few and far between, LMB were undersized/underweight.
Over the years I've added more GC for elodea control, bucket stocked BG and GSF, a very few BCP, and a few SMB. I've hammered on the LMB, removing 184 in the last 3 years.
4 years ago I added 18 RBT and BRNT and started feeding Aquamax at first, then Skretting when I could no longer get Aquamax. The trout persisted for 2 years, grew to 24", and burned out and died. I've continued to hand toss feed since then with only the GC showing interest. The perch and sunfish had not seemed to accept it as food.
One week ago I got my first bag of Optimal Bluegill and have been trying to feed a small handful most mornings and evenings. and am seeing interest in the feed. This morning I fished. I caught numerous chubby YP and GSF where I had fed. They're full of Optimal. Success! In the years when I'd fed Purina and Skretting, I only gutted one fish with pellets in it. Nearly every fish this am had been chowing down.

I think I've finally got a food chain of sunfish going. Because I can now get them to eat pellets, I think they will do much better than in the past. I'll keep the bass numbers low and sooner or later I'll have enough food for the bass, too.

As an aside, I also caught a 9" RBT this morning. Our irrigation water comes from a lake on the Dolores river, a trout stream. I've never put trout that small into the pond, so that fish came down the ditch and pipe. Some people are cursed with BH, BCP, LMB, and worse entering their ponds from BOWs above them. I'm blessed with SMB and now trout!

I am bumping this thread with a tongue in cheek observation on the dangers of Optimal. I started feeding Optimal bluegill 2 years ago. The fish have loved it from the start, no rejection, a few red ear (not many, but some!) eat it, and the growth rates, WOW. Easy ordering and to my door delivery is a sweet benefit too. Now, about that growth rate thing. I manage for LM. Biggest lm so far is just over 7lb and around 24 inches. If you take the standard 1/3 length rule, that means those big bass eat mostly 7-8" bg. My bg are growing so fast to 9-10", I am having trouble keeping them culled down. But, boy, as a fly fisher, those babies are sooo much fun on a 4wt. So far this year, about 25 lbs of 9"+ bg have hit the freezer, mostly bigger males after the first big spawn was done. So, if you are managing for lm, watch your bg close, or they may well outgrow the lm ability to eat them. Then you will have to do more fishing, horrible problem, really. But, your bass may end up looking like Flames, and that would be another issue altogether.

I plan on continuing to use Optimal and suffer the management issue of doing more bg fishing. What about you?

I use, and love, Optimal. But I wonder if the feeding was part of the reason I lost my biggest CNBG to fungus last October when temps sharply plunged. Maybe the feed helped prolong the spawn and kept fish in the shallows where they were most vulnerable to severe temperature swings.

Other than ceasing to feed around the end of September, not sure what else I could do.

PS My experience is that their tiny feed, say #2 and smaller, needs to be hand thrown. Gums up feeders after it absorbs moisture. Their giant, 1 inch LMB feed also needs to be hand thrown, and totally rocks for feed trained bass!

I just started feeding optimal, but I am working towards big HBG and I want my stocked gills to stay ahead of my predators (HSB) while the HBG offspring should be the HSB's main meals.

CMM - if you need help culling those overgrown pesky blue gills, just let me know...free of charge, of course!

I wish I knew the actual difference between feeding AM and Optimal. Optimal comes at a fairly large premium(60%) to AM. AS much as I feed (35-40 sacks a year) I'm thinking of moving to AM next year or start mixing and I run out this year.

or

If I cut back 60% on the amount of optimal would I be at the same place?????

Quarter Acre, pm me if you want, I'd love to meet and we can cull some gills at the same time.

I was reading this thread earlier today and decided to try hydrating my feed. I had seen a lot of the take and spit activity with my fish as well. The small fry and minnows obviously just peck away at anything they can corral. It was very enlightening to see how much better and quicker they consumed the little bit I've been tossing out. May have to increase the load just a tad.

I'm currently feeding game fish chow, but have decided that im going to have to make a change to something a little higher in protein. My only concern is, with only 3 LMB in the pond (10-12"), they may run out of viable food if the GSF, BG and RES grow too quickly.

Mike,

How big is your pond, and why only 3 LM? Do you have other predators? What is/are your management goal(s)?

I switched to Optimal from a cheap grain based feed for a couple of reasons, better growth to hopefully get the bg spawning earlier and better water quality. I have had FA problems in the past and used a multi prong approach, but I believe the fish meal based feed was part of the solution.

I just started feeding optimal, I'm seeing some BG spitting but seems to be primarily the smaller ones which probably just can't handle the size. I'm using the Bass Pellets.

Update on my fish eating Optimal.
I've been feeding Optimal BG since last September. The approximately 20 RNBT and TT (tiger trout) are feeding well. Rainbows splash water at least 10 feet when they rise, getting me wet, dousing my cell phone, spotting my sunglasses. Lots of energy. The tigers take a more gentle approach to feeding.
What I'm most interested in is that my GSF and YP are actively surface feeding. That has taken a few years. They are incredibly fat.
And, last night and again tonight, I got to watch a BCP sip pellets off the surface. Another crappie was shadowing the feeding fish, as if to observe what was going on.
It may be the trout voraciously feeding spurred the other species of fish to try the pellets. Occasionally a big LMB will cruise by and take a panfish for dinner.
Anyway, Optimal is working really well for me. Only trout fed on the Aquamax and Skretting feeds I tried in past years. I'm thoroughly satisfied with Optimal.

Yeah, I notice that only the biggest BG will take the 3/8" Optimal Bass Pellets. LMB, of course, love them!

Right now I'm mixing Optimal BG and Optimal LMB. One thing I've noticed is that the LMB feed helps bring in bass who also don't mind slurping down some BG feed (and unwary BG!).