LMB or HSB? How about a little of both? My HSB I put in my pond in April seem to be doing quite well. When I catch one that is they look good. Some of them have already grown from 8 to 10 inches and are now pushing 12 inches. The last LMB I caught looked pretty nice also. Maybe just on the skinny side. I did not have a scale to determine for sure. I do feed my HSB AM500/600 along with my BG. So they may not eat as many BG as one would think when your feeding them on the side. At the 12 inch mark I am sure they could handle my 1 to 2 inch BG which is nice cause my bigger LMB dont really mess with them unless they have to. They are to dang hard to catch and not worth the trouble for a 1.5 to 2.5 pound bass or bigger. This is also why I keep some of my larger GSF. Yes they compete for food, but I have soooooooo many small things swiming around in my pond now it's unreal. My BG and CNBG have been on beds for 6 weeks straight now. I think some get done and others come right in and take over the beds. I mean it's a constant rotation sence I starting feeding them AM500. TJ is right the cool thing about the HSB is you can control them so much better. I put 30 in my pond. 15 of them were 6 to 8 inch and 15, 8 to 10 inch. I may have gone a little high for a 1 acre pond but I figured some of them may not make it. And if I end up not seeing to many fish all around my shore I know it's time I may need to start keeping a few of them. With bass it's very hard to determine what you have. Unless you can somehow get all females or males or like some out here use a very good tagging system for them. If you have 25 bass tagged and you catch a bass that is not tagged then you get rid of it. And even then your still guessing some as to what you have and dont have with bass. I know for a fact I have 30 or less HSB in my pond. It's never going to be more. That's the nice thing about HSB. I think some LMB are good to have though for the control of the medium sized BG. Yes some 18 inch HSB may eat a few 4 to 5 inch BG but your 18 inch LMB will eat many more I bet. This will better help you regulate your BG in that size range that no one really likes to catch anyway. That's just my 2 cents on what I have learned on these 2 very valuable fish in the last few months. So I by any means am no expert but I am learning fast and taking good notes!
