ewest,
Great experiment!
If you have been following the recent discourses on the Forum, you will probably understand that your experiment is of great interest to several of us.
Having said that, I'm very doubtful that your experiment will work based on just my own limited experience. However, it will provide more data that we desperately need.
To wit, in an attempt to "retrain" my Florida strain bass two years ago, I introduced several very aggressive, "starved", native bass from another of my ponds that had never seen an artificial feeder. The result went the opposite of what I had hoped, i.e. the natives "learned" to line up at the feeding troughs just like the Florida strain and pick off BG while they ate the pellets.
In addition, and this was most disappointing/surprising, the natives became lure/fly shy just like the Floridas. Granted, I may very well not have added enough natives to the mix to force the �retraining� in the right direction�but it is also possible that artificial feeding may be a significant contributor to passive bass�and I believe that to be the case. I also believe Florida strain bass are a significant cause of passive behavior (and hence should never be stocked in small ponds).
That is why I�m trying an experiment this year with only F1�s and no artificial feeding.
Just a fascinating topic to me�and I strongly encourage you to keep us informed of your progress. IMHO, this topic is extremely important to future pond management. The answers to our questions may establish paths towards the use of other primary predators e.g. HSB instead of LMB in our small ponds�. and yes I recognize that many folks think that is crazy and that LMB do not �learn� and are always aggressive�. but that just has not proved to be the case for me.
Great experiment!
