Thank y'all for the replies. I hadn't thought about hbg before due mostly to reading a lot about them producing inferior offspring. Do you think they'd be superior to regular bg in this situation due to the fact they don't produce nearly as many offspring? I was thinking that the fact that there is pretty much no structure in this pond that there would be little to no chance for stunting to occur and that basically the bluegill reproduction would be a way to feed any catfish or bass in the lake. Do you think the risk of having a boom of small sunfish is too high to go this route?
As far as adding bass, I've read that smallmouth aren't as good at keeping sunfish populations in check as largemouth but also that they don't reproduce as well without the proper habitat. Would they be an option here or is that not a good idea?
As far as additional forage, would it be worth my money to add golden shiners or fathead minnows? The going rate seems to be about $10/pound. If I stock 100 channel catfish in the 10 inch range in the next month or so and say 250 trout in the 12 inch range in the fall, how many minnows would I have to add? With feed going for $20 for a 50 pound bag of catfish feed that would be more economical going pound vs pound. I'll have to do some more research on feeding as I'm not going to want to get into that if it's going to cost me in the 100s of dollars a month.
