A bag of feed every week. In 4.5 months (19+ weeks), that's 760 lbs of feed, and fingerling would be around $1/lb. As many things in life, if you want it bad enough and willing to pay for it, great things are possible.
Assume a 1.5" BG weighs nil, it would be <.01 lb. A 7.5" BG would be ~.34lb per Wr eqn. If you go by the rule of thumb that 4 lbs of feed = 1 lb weight gain, then each fish ate ~1.35 lbs of something. Since you stocked 2000 CNBG, that's 2700 lbs. since you hadn't stocked predators, let's say they all lived. So you paid for ~30% of their growth. Pellets are indeed great, but those fish found a lot on their own also.
Yes this is true.
I have native minnows by the thousands, upon thousands. When the coppernose bluegill were first stocked, I had these minnows existing , already. They of course have multiplied exponentially. A week after I put the bluegill in my pond , they could be observed attacking and feeding on the babies of the native minnows.
The pond also had an abundance of small bugs, which you are hard pressed to find anymore. Seems they wiped the little underwater bugs out. It also had an abundance of small tadpoles since I have a lot of bullfrogs around this pond. ( the kind that are very good eating) To top things off, I have crawfish naturally. At one point you could walk around the pond and see baby crawfish by the thousands leaving the bank for deeper water as they felt threatened .
Additionally, there are so many native minnows in this pond that it will be very hard for them to be wiped out quickly, if ever. Literally thousands upon thousands in good sized schools as you walk around the bank. These native minnows are live bearers, so when they drop a load of babies, they come out swimming and the newly hatched bluegill tear them up.
Add to this, I added 10 pounds or more of fathead minnows which have also spawned to create yet another forage base, and I have posted photos of a couple of the schools. There are many thousands upon thousands and large schools at times on top of the water and of course you can see them flashing sometimes as far as 3-4 feet down. When I feed, I also make it a point to feed the minnows as well.
My largemouth bass didn't go into the pond until September 10 of this year and I put 50. They were stocked in at roughly 8-10 inches long. I do not know if I have enough larger predator fish, but I'm thinking about adding about 10-20 more bass and also im definitely adding hybrid stripers, probably 60 or so.
There is no doubt in my mind that these fish grew like this due to the forage base, but I can also assure you that supplemental pellet feeding has a fairly large impact.
Pellet feeding not only helped growth, a great deal, but It also took predation pressures off the forage base to some degree, allowing for more minnows to survive and grow, and drop more babies.
Part of my goal in this was to brew up a large ......well, a very large forage base for both the bluegill and the bass. This would include thousands of baby native minnows along with thousands of baby fatheads, for the bluegill hatchlings to feed on. Supplement with pellet feeding and voila......what you see above can happen and can happen very easily.
But you have to feed the minnows too.
i am certainly of an opinion that begs the question, " Why feed larger predator fish and let your forage base in the chain starve? These are the fish that will produce babies for the smaller bream and smaller bass to feed on.
I do not know the consequences 2 years down the road on the path that I have taken, since I'm new at this. But at this point, the results look promising.
