More fish than standard carrying capacity also results in reduced water quality. Reduced water quality is stressful to fish, thus fish will eat less and grow less during stressful water quality conitions, thus you are losing growth rate of all existing fish. As Bob Lusk says "every day that the bass does not fill its belly is one day it does not grow."
To get to 10 lbs it needs to grow every day. Good year round water quality is important for growing trophy fish. It is not an accident that some waters consistently produce trophy class fish. All of B.Lusk's four needed 'features' or conditions noted in my post above need to 'come together' for the ability to have trophy fish water. Fish over crowding is not one of those 'features'.
Here are just a few words and just couple of the several requirements from Bob Lusk about growing big bass that are in the trophy category.
""When a bass can eat those smaller bass, its world changes. Its behavior changes, its food chain changes and its growth rates change.
Bigger bass have larger habits. They dominate the best habitat. They eat whatever they want. A six pound bass will readily eat a two pound bass.!!!!!!!!!
So, the keys are:
Provide habitat for all sizes of each species you need.
Make sure you have adequate amounts of the right size food sources at the right time.
Cull young, slow growing fish...keep catch records and pay attention to body condition of your fish.
Genetics are important.
Get bass from fingerling to 16.5" as fast as possible.""
With Greg Grimes' bass growing philosophy and methods you can grow bass from fingerling to 16"-18" in one year given a 10-11 month growing season. 4" to 18" is 1.27" per month growth rate. This equates to a growth rate of about 1.07 mm/day for 11 months. The fish has to be growing every day to reach the trophy size category.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 03/27/14 03:51 PM.
