Using some 3"-4" with 4"-6" trout as forage pond trout will be cheaper, and feasible. One should be able to raise them to double or triple their size in 10 weeks providing a variety of larger trout for several size classes of big bass.
If you try the crappie and they are actively recruiting juvenile crappie or even bluegill, you may have to figure out how to harvest significant numbers of them (angling-seining-trapping) to supplementally feed the big bass with vulnerable, in pond grown, manually stressed, forage fish. Manually capture, stress selected individuals released into the pond as easy capture food items. A big bass may not routinely make the effort to catch healthy 7"-8" crappie but would aggressively eat a wounded (stressed, vulnerable) larger fish. We see this behavior when the tilapia are dying, stressed from cold temperatures. Numerous larger YOY tilapia remain uneaten until the cold temps stress them and making them easy catch meals. As an example, I had a 15" walleye die from choking this fall after capturing a 5" cold stressed tilapia that was not eaten during warmer water temps.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 01/04/16 05:09 PM.
