Did you take any before and after pictures of your RES in the cage feeding study?? Because 40RES as non-eating slow growing RES at least survived, 125 grew well, and you had only 18% deaths of the 200 3"-4" that were stocked, I would consider this very good for caged RES. In 2017 I would again try the same stocking number you used in 2016. Your cage stocking density of 6 /cuft was not too high because some crowding of the fish in the cage is good because it helps increase competition, thus improves feed training, and reduces aggressiveness, territorialism, and 'fighting' of the fish.
As a comparison, however this time I would try feeding Optimal Jr instead of the Aquamax. This will be a very good educational, RES food feeding test. Many will learn from your pellet feeding test.
Those feeding RES say the RES eat the Optimal noticeably better and train to pellets quite a bit faster than using the Aquamax. Also use your same training method of adding chopped meats as in 2016. Optimal is available in northern IN from Hoosier Pond Pros. He might even give you a discount on the feed if you share the feeding data and some pictures with him.
http://www.hoosierpondpros.com/Store.html 
