Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding Commercial Feed Trained LMB

I see where comments are made concerning feed trained LMB. I have LMB in my pond but I have never seen them eat commercial food. Just the BG, Cats, Grass Carp, and Koi eat my commercial feed.

I didn't schedule training classes for my bass when they arrived. Is this something that I need to do?

Or do you start feeding them in cages before they are released in the pond or lake to aclimate them to the feed. Or is this a certain kind of bass you buy from the fishery?

Please let me know it sounds funny to have trained fish.

Many times, LMB can be feed trained when they come from the hatchery. This is more likely to be the case when you are buying "older" fish as opposed to fingerlings.

I don't know if people have had success getting LMB to pellet feed once they've been in the respective ponds.

Don't waste your time trying to train LMB to eat pellets. They are not interested. I have saw a LMB spit a pettet out more times than I care to count. Your best bet is to talk to a hatchery about trained LMB.

Again, we all have many different experiences with our fish. Many of our LMB (but certainly not all) have adapted to eating pellets. This is true of other species that have never seen a pellet before being placed in our lake. We use Aquamax 600 and maybe that makes a difference, I don't know.

This link may help with the question. Most feed trained LMB are hatchery trained starting at 2in. to feed on krill and worked up quickly to pellets.

http://www.pondboss.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=20;t=002009#000005

Norm,

Are you absolutely sure they were not feed trained at the hatchery or the source the hatchery got them from? I have found most hatcheries are feed training their bass now because it's cheaper than feeding fatheads.

Cecil, no, I'm not positive about the LMB. I am positive about the rock bass and goldeyes. Surprisingly, we even have one white crappie that now comes up for pellets.

Cecil, you bring up an interesting point. If many LMB are feed trained at the hatchery, we can almost count on them going for pellets when we put them in our lakes. This opens up a whole new set of possibilities for those people who want to raise big LMB in their lakes.

Norm,

This is true however I think as they get larger and there is a good food source they may not gravitate to the pellets. For the really larger ones there has to a lot of competition for feed and a shortage of natural feed for them to go for the pellets. And there are always a few that go off pellets.

My point was there are folks that get all excited that their bass are learning to feed on pellets when in reality they were trained to when younger.

I have an unreal density of bass in my bass pond feeding on pellets. About 300 from a pound to 5 lbs.

Cecil, good points. I can only go from our experience in our lake. We have many LMB that appear to be too lazy to even go agressively for minnows. They just want to slurp down easy to eat pellets on the surface.