Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding At the Feeder

Waiting at the feeder CNBG

Looks like a good representation of different sized fish, everything must be going according to plan! Do you have a personal best (so far) you would share with us, ewest?

Watcha feed'in 'em? AM500?

Great pictures Eric - wish I could see my CNBG like that - wild and crazy when the feeder goes off tho ...

Fantastic photos. What is interesting to me is that the water looks pretty shallow. My bluegill will only feed in several feed of water.

My bluegill are also still kind of sluggish, as the water is still pretty of cold. At least watching the trout is a lot of fun this time of year. It is like they know exactly when the feeder is going to go off, as they seem gather below the feeder with open mouths.

My bluegill wait just like that. When they here my four wheeler come up they get to the dock as fast as they can.

I'm not sure if you'll be able to see this or the quality the pictures were taken with an iPhone, they show my buddy actually handfeeding gills

They eat GFC and AM 600. Range in size from 2 in to 11 inches. Those are George's grandbabies. They eat like pigs. They would eat 10 lbs a day per feeder with no problem if provided. At 2 lbs per day over 3 feedings they eat all the feed in under 1 min. under current conditions. On the weekends they get about twice as much food and clean it up in about 2 min. Have a uv filter on the camera. Those fish are in water from 3 inches to 6 feet+ just off the dam. The sun was in the worst position for the pic - lots of glare. Will get some better pics next time.

great job....

The colors are so striking on that fish. I sure wish I could try some of those up here.
Ewest, I always feed until the fish show me they're done, (full), however I only feed once a day. If your fish would consume the extra feed, is there a reason not to give it to them? Certainly they don't appear to be suffering from a sparse diet, I was just wondering if there would be any advantage to increasing the amount, as long as they are willing to eat it and not leave it floating.

Your logic is sound.

Our reason is cost and goals. Right now feeding about 2 bags a week from 4 feeders over 34 acres. If I went up to 10 lbs it would take 10 bags +. Over a feeding season that is a lot. Plus our goal is supplemental feeding not feeding to satiation. If we did that we would have lots more BG than we want and that can be a problem. Our goal is balance not trophy BG or LMB.

Feeding without adequate harvest leads to more fish not just bigger fish. We don't hit out harvest #s real well so we don't want to make it 5 X.

That settles it, I'm off to buy a fish feeder this weekend!!

Snide, make sure you fill that feeder with a high quality feed!

You want the most bang for your buck. I feed Aquamax, as do lots of folks on here.

We have exciting events here in WV. We actually have neighbors who know the feeding schedule, and come to the pond to view the feeding.

This past Saturday evening, we had several couples come over after the running of the Kentucky Derby. Just like at the Derby, all the critters cued up before the signal went off. Then the feeder went off. As always, it was fun to watch.

No mint juleps, just some Bud Light and Yuengling. Lots of crazy trout and bluegill challenged each other for the pellets.

The WV ore-durves (sp?? oar-derves??) were smoked trout, mixed into cream cheese with minced onions and seasoning, and thinly spread on fine crackers.

(The spreading of the crackers, after the first running, went from dainty and thin, to about 1-inch in thickness on the second cracker. Next year, I need to put in a lot more winter trout!)

Gotcha.
I wouldn't want to buy that much feed either. Your point about supplemental feeding, rather than feeding to satiation when a balanced pond is the goal, is well taken. More is definitely not better in a situation such as you describe.

You raise an interesting point. A well-meaning pondmeister, upon seeing great results from his feeding program, decides more is better and increases the feed to grow even bigger fish. The population begins to grow rapidly, and fish quality suffers. His fish aren't growing, they're not as big as they used to be. They must need more food. He increases the amounts yet again. A runaway chain reaction ensues, and his once balanced pond is in shambles.

Admittedly, this is a worst case scenario, but it emphasizes the need to harvest, especially in a balanced pond environment. I'm so used to using pellets to grow big fish, that I never stopped to think that they might also grow big numbers of fish.

Raising hybrids must be making my brain lazy.