I thought I would throw in my two cents, for the first time. I'm in North Florida, finished building a one acre pond July 1, filled it up (average depth 5 ft) mainly via a well, stocked it first week of October with 350 bluegill and 150 shellcracker, and installed a Kasco 1 h.p. aerating fountain 2nd week of October. The guy at the fish hatchery told me to throw in about a quart a day of floating food......he recommended the local FRM brand of floating catfish pellets; so I picked up the fish on a Friday and went down to the corner store the following morning to get a bag of FRM catfish pellets (which they stock next to the pig and poultry food, and opposite the bread rack (mostly white). So I deligently threw in a plastic drink cup full of the pellets in the morning and the evening (per instructions). I sat there on the dock and watched the floating pellets float away, without any apparent interest from any fish. So after a week or so, I decided that I was wasting my time and probably polluting the water. Then it occured to me that maybe I should make the food more palatable to those little 1" babies that I unceramoniously dumped into the pond. So I put a handfull of the FRM catfish food between two heavy duty shop towels and beat on it with a two pound hand held sledge hammer. So now, every morning, I beat up my fish food, go down to the dock, and throw it into a feeding ring (another tip from someone, made out of two 10' pcs of 1/2" electrical conduit). The bottom line to this saga, is that over the last month, I have never seen more than about 15-20 fish at any one time, and that's out of 500. They still ignore anything on the surface, and I can't verify what they do with whatever hits the bottom.
So that's my story, until tomorrow, when I'm sure there will be something else happening out there.
