jawbone, Russ, Eric, Answers & Comments.
Russ - From your post you may have it figured out, but feeding fish food pellets increases the amount of manure they produce. Extra manure fertilizes the water which grows plants including algae. the more manure added to a system the more fertile it becomes. In an enclosed pond with no outflow the nutrients are trapped & the system keeps getting richer each year which causes more plant growth than the year before.
Eric - Hyb stripers do very well in our northern ponds. They always seem to be hungry & they grow fast as long as the have adequate food. I've grown them to 27-28", tremendous fish, however they do have some disadvantages; but not many. Dan Laggis @ Lagins fish farm grows some of the nicest healthiest fish I've seen anywhere. 1st class operation. Jones' are okay but not as clean & careful as Laggis.
jawbone - query - Bass alone, Forage later?. Thanks for the page reference, it saves me time.
They MMP are right, bass can survive alone in ponds without other fishes as competition, BUT one can't raise as many pounds per acre & they don't get very big. When alone, they usu. max out at 11" - 13" when there are abt 50/acre. Their max size is dependant on how many are stocked, and how many are eating what food is produced naturally in the pond. Stock fewer per acre and they will get a little bigger. Now each has more food. To get them bigger (2-4 lbs) they need lots and lots of food/forage fish or pellets. They can't grow much or won't grow at all on a maintance diet; they also require food for reproduction which takes a big percent of the food eaten.
PBoss recommends first stocking the forage, allowing it to spawn and then adding the predator to then eat lots & grow fast. This makes good sense and works very good even in MI.
This method takes patience, but gives great results.
Important: Keep in mind that to grow to one pound, the predator (bass) has to eat ten pounds of live food or equivalent(1.5 to 2 lbs dry high protein 40%+ food). Ten pounds of minnows is a lot of minnows or small fish! Some times you can stock a predator together with a forage fish that will spawn the first year and the predator will grow by eating the new hatchlings of the forage species.
Often fingerlings of bass & bgill are stocked together in the north. Both are usu eating the same thing (bugs) and growth is not optimal esp for the bass. . It works better if bass have lots of small fry or young of the year (YOY) to eat; unlimited amounts. Many pondowners stock FAThead (not flat head) minnows which are prolific and they give the bass a jump start on growth the first year.. After the first year or sooner the bass almost always eat all the breeding adult fatheads so this food source is quickly eliminated in just about every case, exceptions
occur & these are most often in weedy habitats.
Golden shiners also usu. get eliminated quickly by the bass in nonweedy ponds. As MMP points out extensive refuge areas (rooted plants) provide shelter for forage; esp minnows. Weeds are not as important to maintain bgill numbers because of the size thing. A few weeds also favor bass-bluegill combinations. Too many weeds create too many hiding places for bgill and bass cannot find/catch them; then bgill start to overpopulate and stunt.
Bgill work well with bass because they grow to a width that bass cannot easily eat and they survive to spawn next year. But with bgill you have to insure there are adequate numbers and sizes of bass to control bgill numbers. Here again this is where knowledgeable MANAGEMENT is important to produce the type of fish population YOU want to have.
My philosophy is, the more you feed the fish welfare (pellets) the less likely they are going to eat the forage fish, esp. important when using minnows as long term forage..
In regards to feeding the predators pellets, why work to eat, when someone is always going to feed you, all you have to do is show up and fill up? They do eat some forage but they do not "hit" it as hard. Some fish will not stay on pellets and revert back to eating fish. Of course in the case of bass or perch it helps to buy pellet trained fish if you expect them to eat pellets. Dan Laggis @ Laggis Fish Farm, Gobles MI, as noted above with Eric, specializes in pellet trained fish.
