Hey DownByTheRiver,

That gator is there to eat something. It hard to say how many fish he'll eat. But the more he weighs and the faster he grows the more it will take to feed him. He will eventually move on when the pond won't support him any longer, or when you relocate him, or club him, or ....

Given what you got already, you might try to make a nice Warmouth BOW out of it. You don't need a lot of predator. Maybe say two Female LMB or a 5lb Flathead Catfish. Or maybe 5 HSB every 3 years or so. Best if the predators don't reproduce. You could fish them out when they start to get lean and replace them. Try to keep the weight of predators below 12-15 lbs gross weight. With enough predation the Warmouth should grow large for you and your skillet.

The way to look at this is that Warmouth will not support a lot of LMB. But if limited and not reproducing, there is no reason why the warmouth could not support a couple or just a few. The fewer there are, the larger they will ultimately get. It may even be possible to grow 1 LMB to >10lbs.

If you want lots of LMB ... then stock them mixed sex as recommended above with some BG. They aren't going to get large because they will be recruiting but you should still have some nice BG and maybe a few WM that will probably eventually disappear.


Last edited by jpsdad; 10/25/19 11:10 PM.
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