My experience is that you have to be willing to sacrifice fish to starvation if you want to have any fast growers. If you want fish big enough to avoid LMB predation, you should consider getting about five times more than you need, and get them small and cheap. Build a cage and starve the fish from everything but pellets and a certain percentage will give in and take to the artificial feed. 20% maybe. The ones that convert will grow like crazy.

Holding a redear sunfish is like running with scissors.