I contacted Matt a few weeks ago and ordered some Optimal Bluegill fish food. It arrived Monday and was packaged very well. For six weeks I had been feeding Aquamax in my FHM/RES only pond. I had never noticed a RES hit the surface or an aquamax pellet. Monday night I switched from Aquamax to Optimal. Tuesday night I noticed a dozen or more RES hit the surface. Although I'm not 100% certain they are hitting the pellets rather than the FHM, I think I can assume they are as I've never seen them hit FHM before. I hope to verify they are feeding on pellets this evening. If so, I have to say I'm shocked. RES are notorious for being very difficult to feed train. And here I have RES in a pond full of food items such as snails and FHM, and they feed trained within 2 feedings. That seems absolutely amazing to me. I'm hoping this is an answer to creating trophy RES fisheries. Cautiously very optimistic at this time.
