Cos, for me it has been all about trying to grow double digit lmb, so I started out with heavy forage base of cnbg,res,tfs,tp, crawfish and 120lbs of fhms with all spawning before the fingerling Camelot Bell (now Texas Legacy LMB) were added. I believe I have around 20 lmb per acre right now but this is not a sure count. This is in a 3.5 acre pond. With all the forage it makes it hard to catch a lmb sample for growth rates. And I am not fishing for lmb except to sample. I have caught one lmb in the last 6 months. I am trying not to introduce lures for catch and release until the lmb are in the 8 to 10 lb range. I am finding out it is not as easy as I thought it would be to grow out some Xtra large lmb, even with the best genes available. If I want to fish at the pond I pick up a fly rod for the cnbg and or res. Those are now two yrs old, feed daily, and some big ones are in the pond for catching and releasing.
One concern I have is weather or not I will get a spawn of lmb next spring. With all the larger cnbg I am not to sure I will get survival of lmb fry next spring.
Tracy, how are the tfs working out? That is interesting about your catch rates. I have a 3.5 acre pond with F1 LMB which was stunted a few years ago, and so I have added for two seasons a heavy forage base of BG, and with a lot of harvesting, growth rates have been more than decent. However, catch rates have predictably gone down. Of course, the trade-off we all make in trying to grow double digit LMB! I wonder if increasing structure would help some of your LMB fry survive?
As for the fly rod, I almost never do anything but fly fish for bass now days. There is almost nothing in the world better than that! Cheers
