What did you use to catch those flatheads? Those fish were reducing the fish numbers in the BG pond. It would be very interesting to hear how many fish and what sizes each of smaller fish those flatheads were eating each year. Also if you catch more, please measure the mouth width and length of each new one you catch. Thanks.
There should be some sort of conversion factor for how many pounds of fish need to be eaten per pound of predator for that predator to grow normally. It would take a better 'bean counter' than me to figure that one out.
I do know that many LMB can grow 1 lb per year (maybe more weight gain in the south with a longer growing season). This equates to about 10 lbs of live meat (bugs, crayfish, fish, amphibians and birds) of some sort per year per fish. If we use a 16" lmb (2.25 lb std wt) as an example this means it could eat around 226 to 453 four inch BG (10-20g ea) to get 10 lbs of BG. More individuals would be consumed if BG were smaller and if the BG were 5" fewer (66). If we had 30 16" lmb in an acre and each was eating 350 BG per year this means they are consuming around 10,000 4" BG per year. If that 10 lbs consumed fish were 2.7" FHM this would for 30 LMB consumers equate to around 44,100 FHM. See now why LMB ponds are often low on forage fish????
The example above of 30 16" LMB has 67.5 bass pounds per acre - reasonable amount. If each of those bass ate 10 lbs of all fish this is 300 lbs of forage, about all the forage fish weight that would normally live in one acre. Normally I think one would want the predators to eat no more than 60-72% of the existing forage fish stock each year. In reality there are rarely 30 16"+ bass per acre. Fish ponds are communities comprised of fish of various sizes. I don't think all of those 30 16" bass will eat 10 lbs of forage. Some of the bass may just maintain or slightly increase their weight whereas the most aggressive ones may eat a few more fish than 10 lbs and the majority consume weight somewhere in between 2 to 10 lbs. We should probably cull those slow growing bass. In addition a certain percent of the annual diet will be items other than BG such as other bass, and various meat items that live in or around the pond.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 10/17/14 07:46 PM.
