Originally Posted By: Bill D.
Is a natural pond where big fish eat little fish becoming a thing of the past? Seems all the fish farms have jumped on the pellet fed fish train. A recent PBM article provides that pellet trained LMB will not thrive without pellets. PBF posts provide that non-pellet trained LMB are pretty much unavailable from fish farms. So many stocking recommendations on the forum start with the words, "stock pellet trained..." So what is the choice for a pondmeister that actually wants a pond that depends on natural forage? Bucket stock from wild waters?


Bill -

Nah. Sure there are ponds with folks who have feeders configured to feed, but there are just as many ponds without any feeders in place. It makes sense from a pure financial motive for fish farms to pellet train and feed, but there are sources for non-pellet fish.

We decided not to install feeders at our pond. Sure, it was tempting because bigger panfish may mean bigger largemouth bass, and certainly may translate into more fun as larger CNBGs are being caught. But I kept coming back to "what is one day comes where the feeder stops, what will happen then?" Be it a mechanical failure, a theft, no more feed available, etc. What then? I felt for us that artificial feeding on a regular basis wasn't right. It would likely lead to an unnatural and unsustainable balance within the pond.

Now, we do enjoy hand tossing pellets (and insects!) from time to time. But our goal was a balanced pond that didn't require human intervention to maintain.