JPSdad - Just to clarify since reading back my post was a little misleading, they had been stocking 20lbs in spring and 20lbs in fall. 10 of FHM and 10 of GSH.
That is how I understood your original post. IMHO, stocking 20 lbs of GSH in the spring will provide more forage than stocking 10 lbs of each forage in both the spring and fall. The reason is because the GSH will reproduce where it may be questionable for the FHM. 20 lbs of GSH will likely produce many times their weight in forage for your LMB. They can feed at a lower trophic level than BG and will utilize resources the BG can't.
I'm OK if they will be eaten by Spring. I will just stock again. My worry is my current fish will already be inactice due to the cold and not really eat, and the FHM & GSH will die off over winter making it all a wast of money. ??
I'm pretty sure that most dying prey fish will be spotted and consumed by predators. I've always thought it remarkable the extent to which predators can gain through the winter months.
Down here GSH and FHM cost ~$15/lb and so 20 lbs can translate into 2 lbs of LMB gain if they do not reproduce and are eaten. That's about $150 per lb of weight gained. One the other hand if 20 lbs of GSH are able produce 300 lbs of forage through the season via reproduction then the cost per lb of weight gained falls to $10/lb. Increasing the spring stocking and dropping the fall stocking could potentially increase the fall standing weight of GSH by much more than the 10 lbs you planned to stock ... just saying.:)
