Another observation: I've read multiple times that GC will not eat algae, but just to add a data point, I did sacrifice an old GC (12 years-old, 34" long, 20 lbs), and its stomach contents looked to be 100% FA. It's worth noting that we don't have really any rooted vegetation, so I suppose its options were to eat FA or starve. Maybe you'd get a different result in a pond where it had some rooted/leafy vegetation to pick from.

Stocking Update: I went ahead and picked up and stocked 150 feed-trained 6-8" YP, along with 50 3-4" RES (I realize most RES will get eaten, but they were cheap; I'm just hoping that with the LMB really thinned out and a horde of little BG to distract them, a few of the RES should survive to adulthood.). All fish survived the 5-hour trip (I transported them enclosed inside my car with a blanket over the boxes to keep it dark and blasted the AC on max the whole way home), and so far I've only seen 2 RES (in the shallows) and 2 YP (saw their white bellies in about 6 and 8 ft of water) that have died in the few days since stocking. We do have a new snapping turtle in the pond since yesterday, so I wonder if there are more YP dying in deeper water and if the turtle's just there to clean up. The good news is that most of the YP have schooled and are staying in the shallow end at all hours around a few submerged branches, so I can see them easily and thus can see that maybe 50 (by my estimation) are still alive and well. I feed this group every evening, and they weren't really interested in the pellets after one day in the pond, but now on the second and third days they're starting to remember that they like pellets. They're still pretty shy about feeding on the surface (only at the end of the session a couple get adventurous enough to clean up some of the floating pellets), so I'm hydrating the pellets and have to squeeze several one-by-one to get them to immediately sink and "chum up" the water so they finally get back into feeding mode. If I just throw pellets on the surface, they get spooked by the commotion and never seem to go straight from chilling out on the bottom to hitting the top without being "seduced" slowly by a moderate number of squeezed sinking pellets. I occasionally see a YP wanderer in the shallows in other areas of the pond, and they seem to sit still on the bottom in the shallows in areas where schools of YoY BG hang out, so I wonder if they're hunting BG. These wanderers have the more typical yellow coloration, meaning they never really took to pellets that well in the hatchery (which would explain why they're out looking for schools of YoY BG), whereas the welfare YP school in the shallow end all have a more bluish tint that heavy pellet eaters seem to get.

Also, we saw exactly 1 crayfish in our shallow rocky nursery area, so apparently at least 1 has migrated up on its own from the creek. No idea of the species, but he didn't look like a Rusty by my amateur estimation.