Russ, The BG not eating pellets explaines your somewhat slower growth rates.
You can use the same pellet training method for BG. In fact BG will be able to be trained faster to eat pellets than LMB. I can usually get BG and YP to eating soft pellets in 3-4 days. One important point that significantly affects training is having the fish confined to a cage or similar confinement. Trying to train feed roaming fish in a pond with other fish is difficult with this method. Catch the fish you want to feed train, confine them, then train them.
