It's best to get the trout off of pellets. The Utah chub is the native forage fish. By the time the trout are 12" 90% of thier diet and 95% of thier diet weight is other fishes if present Everyone of those species can eat another fish 1/3 of it's own body length. The chub will not compete with the trouts diet unless they start eating thier own. The big chub can't eat planter trout, ever. The planter trout will eat chub all day long. All of them are late age carnivores. They switch up and eat crawdads, birds, mammals, anything they can.
I would always want Utah chubs in my pond if I was in Utah. That is the natural food chain fish. That is the trout's number #1 preferred forage fish. I would hope to get some breeding adults the trout could not eat as that would supply a full time forage in my little lake.
Most of the time hatcheries supply 9-10 inchers. Sometimes 12. By that time, they are after bigger prey, and are easy to switch off of pellets to natural diet. Those late releasers and trophies can struggle, as they have been pelletized. If I'm creating a food chain to bulk up my trophy trout with natural food, the Utah Chub is it.
