[/quote]I also use Google as my best way to find older posts.
[quote] 2 questions arise: 1 do most fish naturally take to pellet feeding ? I was thinking about a texas feeder. 2 If I were to stock some YP knowing they'll eventually disappear from the lmb or me. Will bg get out of hand in say 3yrs ?? Guessing this all depends on the numbers and size stocked.
1. "do most fish naturally take to pellet feeding ?" I could write a whole article about this.
" for most fish" - My experience usually says no or one gets just casual and not high percentages of aggressive pellet eaters. Numerous factors will determine what and how many fish "take" to eating pellets. IMO a lot of it depends on how well one spends time training to develop pellet eaters. It takes time and due diligence weather training fry/fingerlings or larger fish. Larger fish are a little harder and more tricky to pellet train, although it can be done. Successes are variable.
A.. amount of natural foods present.
The more natural foods that are present the less likely that fish with full bellies will try eating something not natural to them. Hunger is a powerful motivator to try eating unknown items. Some fish like people are more inquisitive and aggressive compared to others of their kind. Most Inquisitive ones will be the first ones to accept unknown items. IMO fish that accept and reject an unknown pellet is mainly because of texture and flavor. A pellet is usually quickly rejected due to its hardness despite it might be flavor enhanced. Most of the natural foods fish eat are fairly soft. My experience shows that softening good quality high protein pellets gets a lot more untrained fish to accepting the pellets. Higher quality pellets have added flavor enhancers and fish meal and oils.
B. the fish species present.
Most panfish species usually are the cherry picker type of feeders. Seeing a motionless, slow moving or sinking items and sucking it in for taste and texture. Whereas predatory fish look for food items that are moving and active. Numerous panfish species will eat snails especially the thinner shelled snails that are fairly easily crushed. Some snail species have thinner shells than other snail species. Fish that are eating snails are sometimes the first ones attempting to eat hard pellets. Thus the type of snail in a pond can can influence how well fish will accept a new type of hard item such as pellets.
C. age of the fish.
The younger the fish is the more likely it will accept an unknown food. Young fish as they grow eat a lot of tiny zooplankton and do a lot of testing of different types of small food items. About all hatchery fish are pellet trained when fish are 1/2"- 2" long by using tiny sinking pellets when these fish are currently eating all sizes of small zooplankton that are sinking or wobbling up and down in the water column.
D. the brand and size of pellets used.
All pelleted fish food brands are definitely not the same. Flavor, amount of fish meal, amount of protein and shape of pellet are I think important influencers of how quickly and how well untrained fish will accept the artificial hard food. Foods for training fry and fingerling fish have very high protein content of around 50%-60% protein, and usually composed primarily of fish meal and flavored oils. When I first started training fish to eat pellets, I bought from one company that made a moist pellet especially for training LMB - the Oregon Moist Pellet – Biodiet now called Bio-Oregon. Another pellet brand now has elongated or cylinder shapes of pellets similar to a short worm/grub or insect body. Feedback has been this brand and shape of pellet helps get finicky fish easier to train to eat pellets. Shape and flavor being important.
Will BG get out of hand in say 3yrs ?? Guessing this all depends on the numbers and size stocked.
Abundance of BG almost always depends on the number of predators, usually LMB, that are present. If it were my pond and wanting a good size (8"-9") BG to be a common panfish, I would make my fish harvest focus to be removing primarily the LMB of 14" and larger. This allows the total weight of bass in the pond to be more numbers of smaller sizes. A pond's biomass capacity of LMB is based on the amount of pounds present not numbers. Five 1 lb bass = one 5 lb bass. It is the smaller sizes of bass than do the best job of controlling the numbers of small BG while allowing the average size of the BG to be trending toward larger sizes. You want lots of smaller bass eating lots of the small BG. This makes the total weight of panfish trending more toward fewer bigger ones who have more food for them to continue growing well. Too many small BG eat too much of the natural foods and not leaving enough for the biggest BG to keep growing. Bigger BG need lots of food to keep growing. If it were mine I would learn how to recognize male and female BG. Then harvest pre-spawn (spring) mostly the females. This reduces the number of females spawning and keeps the surviving smaller male BG growing better and delays them from spawning as quickly until they are larger sizes as they
are better able to compete with biggest spawning males for colony nesting areas.
You can also use fish traps and a 20-40ft seine for the shallow spawning areas to help the bass remove remove what you feel are excess small BG. I make most of my fish traps from 1/2" hardware cloth. See Youtube videos for the Z Fish Trap, Fish Traps and cloverleaf traps.
See Douglas Nets for long minnow seines and
good larger fish box and cylinder traps at
https://ktraps.com/pages/about-our-traps
