This whole thread has me rethinking the feeding plan entirely. Initially I had hoped to establish a good forage base so that I would not need to feed my smallmouth. I am letting the pond sit for a year without predators so the varied forage (fhm, gs, crayfish, grass shrimp, banded killifish, spotfin shiners, greenfin shiners, bluntnose minnows, johnny darters, RES) can get established before the SMB and YP are stocked. I was going to put a feeder in soon and get some AM600 going to kick start the growth of the forage and eventually predators but if that means the predators will be too feed-oreinted to catch why did I spend so much time and money establishing the forage fish to begin with?
Another part of me is thinking maybe some of the people on this site are noticing the difficulty of catching the feed-trained fish because they are either fishing solely with live bait (worm or minnow under a bobber) or their kids are having a tough time catching fish. Both of these situations could suggest that the fishing tactics are to blame and not the feeding. A minnow or worm under a bobber is not a very natural presentation to a fish, sure you are putting the real thing out there for the fish but there could be millions of the real thing for the predators to choose from! Your minnow swimming 12" under a bobber is totally missed by the bass that are chasing schools of the same minnows! For this reason I will mainly be fishing artificials that trigger reaction strikes from fish or that stand out more and get the attention of the predators. I am sure the big ones will get hook shy if I over fish the pond but I do not foresee myself (or my kids) getting to fish the pond more than 4 days a month anyway.
For those of you finding the fishing to be tough please try throwing a weightless senko, a shakey head finesse worm, a texas rigged craw imitation, a crankbait, or a topwater popper and report back! I would love to know if the fish are not hitting artificials before I decide to spend $600 on a feeder.
