thanks guys. as far as "secrets" go, i've really only held out on one big one - the particulars of my feeding program. i need y'all to understand something about that. it's not that i want to be selfish or stingy or secretive. far from it. anything i could say to help my fellow pond guys out on here, i gladly would and will. it's just that there is a very tedious balance to what i am doing. for all that i appear to have done right, there is one major problem. my fish die young. they grow like crazy for a while. they are jaw droppers with freakish proportions that a lot of folks would proudly hang on their walls. they reach lunker status at blazing speed - even some of the males. and i am able to continually keep multiple big fish in the pond at once, something that can be very hard under normal circumstances. but sadly, these lunkers usually seem to "burn out" and die prematurely. on top of that, they appear to be more "fragile" than regular old bass and i have to be careful when and how i handle them.
i believe this is due to the feeding program. i have been unable to obtain high quality food like aquamax. i have made do with what is available. as you can see from the pix, it works - big time. but like i said, success comes with a price - early mortality. to offset this, i keep a stacked population of fish in my program and recruit fish in as needed. that way when a big one does die, there are one or more behind it to take its place. i pretty much keep the same number of fish in the program at the same time - large, medium, and small sized. but it is not the same individual fish from year to year. inevitably fish die each year. fortunately my contingency plan of constantly recruiting new fish into the program acts as a continual buffer against the majority of the population crashing at once.
basically what that translates into is this. i could tell someone everyting i'm doing. if they chose to do it, they could have multiple big bass in their pond at once - 4's, 5's, and 6's easily. bigger in some cases. they would be some of the fattest, prettiest fish you ever saw. these bass would be super easy to catch for you and those you chose to educate about what you were doing. difficult if not almost impossible for anyone else to catch. but they would die. and they would die quicker than fish under ordinary circumstances. and if you weren't prepared for this inevitability, you and your pond would be set back a year or two.
that's why i don't just spill guts and tell what i'm feeding the fish. because done wrong, what i'm doing could actually set you back big time. and you can't take shortcuts. if you do, you will learn very quickly that mother nature does not like to be tinkered with and she can exact a heavy toll if you are unprepared for the challenges that arise. in other words, you can't just throw a bunch of _______________ in your pond for your fish to eat and call that good.
honestly, with what i am doing, initially GETTING a population big bass in your pond can be quick and easy. but continually KEEPING a population of big bass in your pond this way is anything but easy.
Last edited by jignpig; 10/28/10 07:17 PM.
