The key here is Supplemental feeding. That means not all the food they will eat (satiation). Watch your water quality the more you feed like an aquaculture operation.

With 3 lakes and supplemental feeding ( feeding times and amounts change with the conditions)and 4 feeders for 36 acres the cost is about $1500 a year. AM 600 and GFC and some AMLM for the HSB(by hand - 5 bags or less). We don't try to keep the LMB on feed as it has not worked well in our situation (they like live prey and tend to get off the feed). Some LMB do still eat pellets. For most of the feeding season we feed 1 second 3 times a day. For a few weeks at max feeding temp we feed 3 times for 2 seconds. Hand feeding on weekends adds about 15% +- (compensatory feeding).

Now this bolsters Esshup's point. Our fish using that plan will eat all the food in under 1 min. (2 min if using the higher setting). They would IMO eat 10 times that much if we tried to feed to satiation. Then the price would go from 1500 to 15000 and that does not include feeding the LMB. What we would get from that would be way to many fish to harvest leading to either skinny overcrowded populations or an ever increasing food bill. Water quality problems would likely arise also.

Many other factors to consider , location , water quality/productivity , species , harvest , fishing pressure , goals etc.


Last edited by ewest; 05/20/11 09:37 AM.