Below is a listing I posted in an earlier post with reported energy densities.
Species................J/g Wet......Author
===========......======......================
Black crappie........4186..........Kitchell et al. 1974
Bluegill..................4186..........Kitchell et al. 1974
Common carp.......7524..........Cummins and Wuycheck 1971
Golden shiner.......4983..........Kelso 1972
Green sunfish.......4186..........Kitchell et al. 1974
Largemouth Bass..4186.........Rice et al. 1983
Northern crayfish...6153.........Stein and Murphy 1976
Northern pike.........3600.........Bevelheimer et al. 1985
Rainbow trout.........6069.........Rand et al. 1993
I think I remember this post from my early days on PB, and it's likely where I remember the common carp value I mentioned above. Was this by chance in a thread we were talking about Trophy LMB and RBT?
Common Carp and GS would both probably be off my list for anything other than fresh cut hand feeding due to trouble I would likely face in introduced into the pond.
Rainbows and Crays are very interesting to me. I wonder how one would rank a forage species if there was a chance one of them would potentially recruit year of year vs annual mortality due to water temps. TP not listed above also fit into this category I think with the annual mortality - and their need to die due to being more prolific than BG.
I have that table saved in a text file and have posted it here before. Not sure which post.
Did you mean Goldfish in instead of Golden Shiner as species to avoid? I do think
hand cut carp or goldfish would be good food for your LMB.
Swingle tested a lot of species in combination with LMB. In the end he settled on BG. BG did not provide as much first year gains as other forages ... but they had staying power and developed a balance where both predator and prey reach sizes to harvest. All of the other species, lost staying power or just didn't produce enough forage for the LMB. Reasons for losing staying power.
1. Brooding adults consumed. So minnow species fit this category. They can't get big enough to avoid predation and as a consequence they are most often extirpated.
2. Brooding adults live too long and grow too large. Carp and goldfish fit this category. Once they fill the carry capacity they stop reproducing very well. The carry capacity is too full of big fish that cannot be eaten by even the largest of LMB. The water is forage locked.
IMO, when adding additional forage, they should interfere as little as possible with the production of BG. Their presence should increase recruitment of BG to juvenile sizes. Species that can be extirpated are great because the brood population can be controlled. Additional forage should augment BG ... or at least that is my opinion. Rather than ranking, I like an approach that understands the balance of energy needs of a dynamic, growing (by individual weight not by numbers) population of LMB. Such an approach would seek
the most cost effective way to supply the energy consumption needed by supplementation when natural in-situ production is falling short.
BD, please, no more questions for me.
