I will say that our feed trained LMB have taken our lures to some extent this last season. They were stocked into our pond as 1-1.25 lb. fish in early June 2017. We have intentionally tried to not fish around the feeder area (we will starting next season) but this is in a small 1.6 acre BOW so I would assume the fish do get around to other parts of the pond as well.

We had no trouble meeting our maintenance harvest target of 32 LMB under 14" in length during the 2018 season. At the time they were stocked, all fish were 14" or slightly larger so we know that none of the stocker LMB were harvested. Many of the fish hanging around the feeder appear to be in excess of 3 lbs. We caught probably 4 fish in the 3+ lb. size range from the pond this year. Originally 55 were stocked into the existing LMB population in this 70 year old pond. Prior to stocking, this pond's LMB population was stunted so we harvested 60 fish or approximately 40 per surface acre.

I have only been feeding a total of 2 lbs. of pellets each day (1 lb. twice each day) hoping these stockers would also learn to eat natural forage. We also stocked in 400 adult native northern feed trained BG (5"-7") at the same time as the LMB.

Eric's info is kind of a bummer since the studies show that stockers are not very good at getting on natural forage. We will see what happens in our pond. Feeding fish is an experiment for us and if we start catching a decent number of large stockers on standard tackle next year I will consider it a success. But just in case, I am tying a few flies that look like Aquamax MVP pellets.....BM61.


Last edited by bassmaster61; 11/09/18 02:33 PM.