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 LAMB.
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.
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.
