Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding SMB started taking feed

My pond has RES & SMB. I hand feed the RES daily with softened food & am acustomed to seeing a couple of small SMB taking pellets. About a month ago the SMB numbers increased to more than a dozen from 6" to prob. 12". There are always several larger SMB hanging around with all the excitement of a feeding frenzy going on so yesterday I made a pellet apx 3/4" in diameter & tossed it out. A big SMB hit it hard! Repeated tosses had all the larger SMB fighting for the food. Same thing today.
I thought they had to be trained from fry to take fish food. Is my experience as unusual as I think?
The food I am mashing to make big pellets sinks. I was thinking of getting some Aqumax LM food to make it easier to feed the larger SMB. Does the LM food float? Do you think they will eventually take floating food?

First off: Goody!

SMB are supposed to take feed easier/quicker than LMB. I may have SMB taking Aquamax pellets (500/600) now in with the YP/RES/male BG, I just have no confirmation, visual or eliminatory.

Aquamax LM pellets float (although about 20% of mine sink within 30 seconds or so).

I expect (some of) your SMB will eat floating food, more as time goes by and more if they are hungry.

Smallmouth and LM bass can be acclimated to eating pellets using the technique used by Ric. Using the proper technique, one can feed train various fish that gather around the feeding frenzy. Ric, Once the larger bass are familar with eating the pellets most in not all those eating sinking pellets will move to the soft floating pellets. Converting them to hard pelets will take a little more time and effort.

Ok, so I'm guessing next year I can switch to hard pelets for the smaller fish after a month or so of starting them off for the season with the soft.
Thinking if I soften some LM pelets I might be able to eventually get the larger fish to switch to floating hard pelets.
Thanks