Here's my experience thus far regarding the switch from last years food to this years food.... When I first started using the bag from this year my redears seemed to not like it, or at minimum slowed their eating considerably. I discussed this with Bruce and he thought I may have a hatch of some sort underway that was overwhelming my redears therefore they were showing little interest in the feed. After about 3 weeks of slow or no feeding they began feeding again and seemed to slowly increase to the point that they are now feeding more aggressively than prior. Another concern of mine was that this years batch seemed to have more feed sink upon being released from the feeder and the feed also saturated and sank more quickly. I'm guessing it was less than 5% that sank upon hitting the water, but a noticeable difference nonetheless. At first I wasn't fond of this as a bloom was underway and I couldn't see if they were hitting the sinking pellets or not. But suspected by minnow activity in the area they were not hitting the sinking pellets. That puts us up til this last few days when I've had a chance to do more observation of the feeding. They are now feeding better than they ever have (possibly d/t water temp increasing) but I'm also under the impression the seeming change in food has helped my fishery for two reasons... 1) the small number of pellets that sink seems to have enticed some fish that were too timid to come to the surface before into becoming feed trained and 2) the smaller pellets are being taken by fish too small (4-5") for the larger pellets so I am assured of future generations of pellet trained redears. Also of note, I've NEVER seen fish as obese as these redears. They were particularly large after they slowed their pellet eating for 2-3 weeks. So I'm fairly certain a massive hatch had taken place. These fish were hatched spring of 2015 and I believe average over .75 lb now with what I believe is a few around 1 lb already. Very pleased with the results from Optimal at this time.
Question for esshup.... Would feed fresh from the mill be more likely to sink than older feed? Possibly some drying taking place after I open the bag that changes buoyancy? I'm wondering if that's why some of the newer feed seems less buoyant.
