TJ, What size BG are you targeting for culling? Also, when feeding your caged ones, how much do you feed and at what time intervals between putting feed over the cage? What I'm getting at, is are the caged fish being fed to satiation? I remember reading about the development of feed training LMB. In the R&D phase of the development of the LMB pellet, something peculiar was taken into consideration. Seems I remember that a LMB, and most other fish for that matter, when striking a pellet, only has so many strikes worth of energy, then the fish is fatigued, and a period of rest comes into play. This occurs whether or not the fish has eaten to satiation or not. Thus the pellet size was designed to get a good bite size, delivering X amount of nutrition into the stomach, before the feeding fish goes into siesta mode. I have witnessed this personally with hand feeding. The fish eat ravenously for a while, then stop. If I wait 20-30 minutes, they will again feed heavily for a while. It is my opinion, that what happens many times with auto feedings and hand feedings, that the manager feeds until the fish quit feeding. The manager says "Well that's it, let's set the timer for this"....and life goes on. All the while, the fish are getting rested for round 2?
I personally think that, in waters where the primary goal, IS NOT for BIG BLUEGILL, too much emphasis is put on removing BG. I read about establishing a forage base, with the use of FHM, and GSH. Personally, after doing the WE/SMB thing in my pond, I want as many small BG/GSF as I can get.I have stopped manual removal. Large numbers of small sunfish, will reproduce horrifically, taking the place of FHM and GSH.
According to Dave Willis and Bill Cody, my WE that reached 13 inches in less than a year, had to eat on average of .6 lbs. of forage. With an unknown # of CC, 400 plus WE, and 150 SMB,600+YP, and thousands of sunfish, that's a buttload of YOY.
