I jumped on the bandwagon mentally in 2006 and stocked my first HSB in 2007....I have since introduced them to literally hundreds of lakes and ponds in Illinois and have been following them very closely in each and every place we have stocked them....
In most of our waters without a shad forage base they can make a go in bass infested waters without feed, but it helps tremendously to get them up to about 14" and then they can take off from there...
In my personal lake, HSB is my main meat fish. Right now we have about 4000 of them in the lake and we take out and put in about 1000 each year give or take a few....
They get smarter alot faster than largemouth to artificial baits (mainly when they know your around, they are very keen to that) but there are certain baits they cannot refuse which make them very susceptible to me n the kids anytime we want to have a fish fry...usually when we have fish fry's its 30-100 people and we always catch em fresh same day we eat em....
Oh yeah, for anyone contemplating giving them a try in your pond, here are some pics to help you with your decision. Keep in mind this isn't Texas, but rather Central Illinois, but we now know whats possible from there to here......
