Why not incorporate all you've learned about PBRAS to buy inexpensive fingerling smallies and get them bigger and feed trained at the same time?
Very tempting Bruce since I doubt the smallies we stocked this spring will have much natural recruitment with both LMB and BG already present in our pond. We have recently posted our new fishing regulation sign. LMB 12" to 15" are unprotected, please enjoy a fresh meal.
All sizes of SMB are protected, let David know if you catch one.
We have already removed 230 LMB from the pond this year, average size 1# plus or about 24#'s per acre. This should give our SMB a little breathing room but will also increase the small BG numbers which will hamper the natural reproduction of the SMB & hopefully the LMB too. One thing I have noticed with an increase in mid-range BG numbers is a noticable decrease in the number of snails in the pond. In particular the larger of the two species of snails is absent. I assume that as the food for BG get more competitive, sucking snails out of the shell becomes a more common occurance. There are still snails present so some RES are likely to get stocked this fall, maybe even some pumkinseeds if I can find them. When we were lot more LMB heavy and there were very few BG in the 2" to 8" range there were snails all over the place. Now there are empty snail shells all over the place, there must be 75-100 bleached out snail shells in every BG bed right now.
OK back to the RES/SMB concept.
