You didn't mention the time line for stocking the LMB. Were all 50 stocked the year after the kill? Were they feed trained from a hatchery or were they relocated from a nearby pond?
I think your thoughts about water clarity are relevant but I don't think it is the sole reason for the LMB doing poorly. If I were to guess, I would say you need to look into the aeration and its effect on clarity. Perhaps it is stirring up the pond? Also those catfish may be rooting the bottom.
Feeding does increase the standing weights you can achieve but what you haven't considered is whether the BOW is reaching the limiting carrying capacity each year anyway. Even if the fall standing weights are larger after feeding, there is no guarantee that the spring standing weights won't be nearly the same.
How did you remove 2500 crappie and BG the last couple of years? If you did that by fishing, you've worked very hard at it. I would like to set some context to your current problem. You are in fertile soil country there and your pond may support 300 to 500 lbs of fish/acre ... or perhaps even more. Lets say the average length of your crappie and BG are 4" and the RW is 80. Then you could have around 16500 stunted fish. If you took half of them, they could grow to twice the weight if they didn't reproduce anything to compete with themselves as they grow. But they wouldn't grow to twice the length. They may spend half of that gain fattening up their slender bodies while the other half grows their length. The net result might only be growth in length to about 4.5 inches. If killing them out is an option that you can work with, then this is fastest way to get where you need to go and it is also the most reliable.
Last edited by jpsdad; 05/07/20 11:32 PM.
