Thanks everyone.....I have a high regard for Bruce, Cecil, and Bill Cody's talents. As a matter of fact, it was a collaboration of their efforts, in the form of a three part article about growing behemoth Bluegills, that got me started thinking about raising my own. Those articles were published in PondBoss back in 2006, and I highly recommend that anyone considering trying their hand at growing trophy Gills' should have those issues in their library.
It's true that the article under discussion dealt with native, rather than HBG, but I feel that many of the fundamentals are the same. And while I have made a few changes that may seem contrary to widely accepted practices, that should not infer any wisdom on my part, rather it might reflect what I have come to believe: Raising HBG requires a different way of looking at things....at the very least it may require modifications to some commonly held ideas.
So while I may have tweaked and experimented with a few things, I think there are two factors which account for the majority of my success with these fish.. The work of truely talented individuals like the three authors mentioned above, and the attributes of the fish themselves....I still maintain that HBG are one of the easiest, most foolproof fish to raise. All I had to do was develop the correct mindset.
By the way, I feed AQ500 once a day, temps permitting.
