Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding Fishing the same area

Long delay for an answer. I missed this one and no one 'bumped' me about it. I appologize. It is hard to be sure on this question. It is probably both ways and it depends on each fish. Each fish tends to be a little different. It will not hurt a thing to have a goodly number of larger minnow eating YP. Strong pellet eaters probably rarely eat an active large minnow - too much work esp during pellet feeding season. IMO almost no respectable larger YP will be able to resist a minnow impaled and helpless on a hook. But during non-pellet eating season late fall to early spring I am sure these YP consume at least the occassional minnow or aquatic bugs esp if it is easy to catch - mostly smaller minnows. You can remove a few of the fastest growers i.e.larger YP, esp if you don't harvest evey one you catch. A normal YP pond has good number of these bigger YP and healthy recruits are always 'in the wings' waiting to fill the void of harvested fish. Keeping track or records of the size of YP caught will indicate a lot about the abundance of the various size classes present.