If you wait till October it will sure give the FHM more time to fill up the pond and make a better food source for the small LMB. But I can't tell you which stocking time for the LMB is best and will defer that to more of an expert than me.
The FHM will sure do good on that starter feed and in fact they will do quite fine on feed that is way too large of pellets for them as long as they do not have predators keeping them away from it. When we had FHM's in our pond early we only fed Game Fish Chow because that is all we had readily available. We would see numerous minnows pushing the pellets around till they got soft enough and eventually get them consumed. Of course once the BG get big enough to consume the pellets they pretty much steal it all away before the FHM's can get it. But the FHM's are agressive pellet feeders till they get some competetion or predation.
Early on I would drop a small pile of sinking feed in about 4-5 feet of water. I had bought an under water camera on a cord that I could drop down and watch what was going on. In a short period of time a school of FHM's would find the feed (catfish sinking pellets) and tear into it till it was gone. Actually after a minute or so I would lose track of them because they would muddy the bottom up so much around the feed I could no longer see them on the camera.
Another experience with FHM's early on in my ponds life is I put my scuba gear on and just laid on the bottom in 3-5 feet of water. Within a minute a school of FHM's would find me and start tugging on my hairs all over my arms and legs. I would rarely see them with my eyes, for some reason tish seem to be able to tell which end the mouth is on and that face mask I think just looks like a big mouth ready to eat them. But I could feel 10-20 maybe 30 of them trying to eat the hairs off my arms and legs.
Wife and daughter had a similar experience with their feet. They would sit on the dock and dangle their feet in the water. They would start giggling as a group of FHM's would go after their feet and ankles. They said they were getting a food massage.
Of course all this ends when BG or LMB or any other predator gets big enough to cause a threat to them. Then they are mostly relegated to the shore line or where there is cover from predation. But as long as the fatheads have free range on the pond, they will be everywhere trying to eat what they can. If you can hold off on stocking predators for a while, we just enjoyed feeding them. I even caught a few on hook and line with a tiny hook and just a wee bit of a worm on it. Size 10 or smaller hook.
