Ditto with everything Bill said and posted links too.

Just to put it out there from experience, I've had feed trained smallies with largemouths in a .62 acre pond with just a little rip rap on one side of the pond.

My observations were:

1.) Virtually no reproduction of smallmouth although I did find one fingerling that was not stocked when I drained the pond.

2.) The largemouth were more aggressive and crowded out the smallies at feeding time.

3.) I did get good growth on the feed trained smallies I planted although I was not able to tell how much they fed on pellets.


And I put smallies in a floating cage to get them up to size before planting them into the pond, or they would have become expensive largemouth forage.

Since draining the pond I have eliminated the green carp (largemouths) grin and started over with just feed trained smallies, mostly female yellow perch, and mostly male bluegills. The smallies are doing well and show up at feeding time now. They totally wiped out the thousands of fathead minnows that were in the pond before I planted them.







Last edited by Cecil Baird1; 02/28/12 10:18 AM.
If pigs could fly bacon would be harder to come by and there would be a lot of damaged trees.