I have considered that. My worry is that if and when they mature, that I won’t be able to manage them like bg. I could do emerald shiners as a supplement but the fish I have now chose gold fish over them. When they find their permanent home, they will not be seeing any gold fish.
I really started thinking bg as their main forage after watching a Bassmasters tournament where Spotted Bass were the targeted species and one of the top contenders remarked on the size of the spit up bg in his live well.
I have seen mentioned where people are adding crayfish to their pond. I know that they can add weight to bass but was worried about them drilling holes. Any suggestions on this as a supplement and how quickly do they grow ? Can they be raised with any luck? Or, are there negatives and I should just stay away from them.
The more I learn, the less I seem to know. Great to have a site like this!
To be quite honest, unless you are wanting to spawn and raise forage for the bass in the tanks as a learning exercise, you are economically better off just buying a good fish food like Optimal Fish Food and feeding the bass. Look at the $$ involved in growing forage. Take that $$ figure and extrapolate that number to what it costs per pound to add weight to LMB in your pond. i.e. to put 1# of weight on one bass that weighs 2# now costs you how much using the forage that you grow?
You have to feed that forage somehow, spend $$ on electricity to pump water through the system to ensure that the filter works properly, spend $$ on testing the water, and put how many hours per week into ensuring that the forage fish thrive? Don't do that and if the forage fish die, then how much time growing the LMB have you lost? Remember that the larger a bass gets, the more food it needs yearly to survive and keep growing.
I'd be interested in seeing what you think those $$ numbers are.
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