Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding Pounds of feed for forage fish per Acre ?

J.E.C. your pond problem commonly occurs. esshup has some good fish management information. LMB under weight and an underpopulation of forage fish strongly suggest that there are too many predators eating too many smaller fish. I don't think the basic answer is adding more food or forage fish to the problem. The best solution of too many predators is reducing the number of predators until the small fish numbers gradually increases their ability to reproduce, and the young ones live long enough to reproduce. In some situations it can help to temporarily add some breeder forage fish until fewer bass are present and more young fish are present (survive). Depending on the habitat some cover habitat may need to be added to temporarily or permanently help more young forage fish survive to larger more fruitful and beneficial sizes.

If you had 10 or 12 lions or wolves in a pen or confined area and they were skinny or overly lean but still reproducing more youngsters per year, would your solution be to always keep adding more food for them to now keep more of them all fat and healthy? After a year or two their numbers could more than double and then quadruple after a few more years. Now you have 24 to 50 lions/wolves. I don't think that plan would be the best, wisest management unless you are in the commercial farming business of growing lions/wolves. . Best management would be to reduce the number of them to the best, healthiest reproducing individuals so their numbers would usually stay around 6 to maybe 10 in the pen. Selective breeding and population management for the size of the pen.