Having not been to the pond for a couple of weeks to check on the hybrids, I went last week to check on the 4 � 6 inch hybrid stripers stocked about six weeks ago.

Spent the afternoon until dark observing the pond. The feeder is set for 4:30 pm and when it went off the gills started feeding vigorously with an occasional channel cat but no sign of the hybrids. Then the SE wind drifted the feed into open water and a feeding frenzy began!

At the pm feeding I learned two very important things:

1.The LMB did not do significant damage to the number of stripes � a big school of stockers survived from the original 100 fingerlings.

2. The hybrids don�t eat the pellets the way the gills do � they blow up on them like they are trying to kill them! They blast the water a foot into the air and so fast all I could see was a flash of silver!

I wanted to find out their size, so the next morning I tried to catch one on a small �pellet fly�. No such luck � the wind was blasting and the gills ate very little, and the wind blew the feed to the opposite bank. The stripes started feeding sparingly and by the time I could get the boat into position it was all over.

Which leads me to the (?) conclusion - any fish that will blow up on a pellet of fish food should hit anything that looks like a baitfish!
Any additional ideas on catching them?

George Glazener