Well actually as far as the perch, from my experience it can go both ways. Case in point: In the spring of 06' I moved 70 large female perch to a 1/10th acre pond with the intention of intensely feeding them pellets for faster growth, as I was not seeing evidence that they were feeding on pellets in the main pond they came from. And they probably weren't, as the bass in the original pond are intimidating at feeding time, and there were lots of bass fry and fingerlings to chow down on along with numerous snails.
Well it turned out they fed on pellets for a while after I moved them to this 1/10 acre pond, but seemed to lose interest by early summer. There were a few small bluegills that had swam up the overflow pipe into this pond, and of course snails and invertebrates -- so apparently they perfered them over the pellets. Temps were optimum and never got obove 75 F., as this pond was fed with overflow from the trout pond. At one point I thought maybe I had lost them all, but seeing only one carcass seemed to contradict that.
Anyway, that fall I drained the pond and they were all there except for one or two. Looked healthy and well fed. Who would have thought there was enough natural feed in a 1/10th acre pond for 70 large perch.
Well this spring I moved about 50 perch of both sexes (mostly big females up to 15 inches) into another 1/10th acre pond, and thinking I had learned from the last experience planted about 16 lbs. of fatheads too keep them health and feeding. (This was a holding pond as they were destined for Bass Pro Shops once VHS testing came back negative). Guess what? They seemed more interested in the pellets this time! Go figure! Only thing different this time was there were some pellet feeding largemouths in the pond (initially I was going to produce my own bass) and maybe they relearned to feed on the pellets from the bass and were not intimidated?
