I do things a bit differently now in my 9th SMB season. I don't collect brood fish and wait for the spawn, I actually collect SMB fly right after swim up in my largest pond and move them to a grow out cell. Reduces quite a bit of effort to collect brood fish in April and trying to ensure proper gender spread, also don't have to worry about catching and removing the brood fish following the spawn. Those fish can be amazingly selective and difficult to catch again.
I fertilize March-May with alfalfa pellets or cottonseed for strong zooplankton population prior to larval SMB transfer and add FHM throughout the season. The zooplankton helps the larval SMB make it through those first few weeks - I easily doubled my survival rates once I figured out I was likely losing 90% of my SMB the first few weeks due to starvation. Some years I'll stock 1 adult male and 2-3 adult female BG as their 1-2 spawns help provide additional forage for growing SMB and are free compared to the FHM. I stock just enough BG so I don't have to worry about predation on the SMB. I don't live on site so it's not worth the effort to try and feed train my SMB - but that could be done if I had more time to dedicate to the training 2 times daily.
TJ, I was thinking of texting you about a SMB reproduction pond idea I'm working on, but having it on here may be better. I'm hoping to turn one of my grow out ponds into a SMB reproduction pond, and the plan is to release a small number of brood stock into it. Then what I will do is sink a large 400sq ft plus lift net into it so that about 50-60% of water volume would be inside the lift net. The brood stock would be outside of the lift net where I would have spawning structures built. In the lift net portion of the pond I would have a belt feeder supplying the fry with regular feed. My intentions would be for the fry to enter the lift net for refuge and then grow them to a point where I could just lift the net and acquire 3-4" feed trained SMB. Thoughts?
