Okay, I just had a brilliant idea, Mark (I get one every twenty years or so). Try a different spot for the feeder; if that doesn't work, I know a surefire way you can get some bluegill eating pellet food in that pond...
Buy a few from Bruce Condello. He's been breeding bluegill for ten years now, and has grown them - in NE - to two pounds. He selects them for the fastest growers as well as the ones that feed most aggressively on pellet food, as well as I'm sure many other favorable characteristics I'm not aware of (I know he also selects for the hardiest). Cecil Baird, who's also a regular on here, raises some Condello-strain bluegills, and he's noted that they feed really aggressively on pellet food.
Hopefully moving the feeder works. But if you have a bunch of bonehead bluegill like Theo obviously had, maybe they just need some that are with the program to show them what the deal is. I'd be willing to bet that if you got a few of Bruce's 'gills in there chowing down each day, that the others would quickly figure it out. It's not like a fish to see other fish having a feeding spree and say, "Nah, I don't want in on that easy food."
Also, a few CSBG would improve the genetics of all your other bluegill, and four or five years from now you might be posting a photo on here of a two-pounder.
Theo, aren't you growing CSBG now in your ponds?
