Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Question about feeding / size of feed/etc.

I am working on some carrying capacity information for your pond. Is it as originally posted as 0.25 acre or 0.5 ac as you noted above in this thread.


Also did you install a liner in the pond as considered and discussed or did you use the natural compacted clay bottom for it to hold water?

That's a beauty! Wow. I'm going to follow the "Feeding what they can consume in 10 minutes once a day to get them to grow faster but still have them consume a lot of natural forage in the pond." I think that will work well for me, so I'll try it and report back in awhile how it's going. Thanks!

Been awhile, but I'd like to report that I have been feeding my SBS (also GSH and FHM) the Endurance feed most days; I'd say probably 5-6 days a week. The fish are avidly partaking; they seem to always line up at the deck when I show up, regardless if it's feeding time or not. With the smaller size pellets now, there are no issues; they attack and swallow the food without hesitation. A couple of questions:

1) Why do they often seem to swim under and around the food sometimes, without immediately grabbing it? Are they not always aware of the food directly above them? Often they seem to make a beeline for the food from a foot or two away; never underneath.

2) The FHM and GSH seem to be in lesser numbers, which I'd think indicates that some of them are getting poached by the SBS....but I wonder why more of them aren't getting eaten. I'll see a little school of them always around, and I see them being chased....I think....though I never see them getting grabbed....but they seem slightly larger, which is what I'd expect....my question would be at what point are they in serious, constant danger of getting eaten by the larger fish? I would have expected that would have already happened. Very curious about that, as the 3-5" HSB will be stocked in late Oct. Note: the GSH or FHM are already spawning, and I'm planning to also pick up a couple lbs. of each when I get the HSB.

Any thoughts appreciated.

While the ten-minute rule is commonly used, it relates more to not over feeding than best practices for growth. Growth is different by species. BG/RES etc. have relatively small stomachs. They grow better with smaller feeding amounts several times a day (during growth months). FH and GSH are similar. LMB, SMB and HSB can eat once a day and maintain good growth. All of this is supplemental feeding info and assumes there is enough natural food.

Your results noted seem on course - keep at it. Fish vision is not exactly like ours (2 eyes on the front focused for binocular vision). Fish often turn their head from side to side to get accurate size and distance info. Also, it is thought that fish have different color vision (light through water) and may see in spectrums that we can't.

Thanks ewest for that good info.

I have read a lot of threads about gape size and the optimal size of natural forage and pellet forage for our fish.

I don't recall a discussion about relative stomach sizes! Makes perfect sense to me based on the pellet-feeding behaviors I have observed at my buddy's ponds.

I hope this is appropriate here since it is about feeding. I tried a search but didn't find what I am looking for.

Maybe it's just a stupid question but for those who feed and live where your pond freezes over for several months....I know the fish require much less to eat during those months but if they are used to getting food regularly, is there any effect on health/growth in those winter months? There is a push during the warm months to grow fast and bigger which means they require more to sustain through the winter months even though they are much more lethargic.

Or, am I overthinking the whole feeding thing? In my case - one acre pond, 13ft in deepest, BG, SM, LM, and Crappie.

A bit of a guess from me but this may be somewhat climate/region related. For the fellas in the south that don't have ice or minimal ice they have an easier time with feeding in the cooler months. Breaking ice in order to throw pellets will not happen for me.

In my case (NE Kansas) I did shut the feeder down at the end of the year when the fish slowed as water temps fell BUT I didn't stop feeding. I stocked our place with 100lbs of Golden Shiners late in the year to make sure the fish had more than enough food to get them by. I really didn't stop feeding...I was just using different food. Our goals also include beating the avg on fish size on the LMG.

Our LMB are running 14" or so this year....I'm debating the use of trout or GSH this year as part of the fall forage bump and have been stocking crawfish from the local creeks in my area over the past couple of weeks (3 to 3-1/2 lbs so far - goal is to get to 20lbs by the end of the season).

Interested to hear others opinions and thoughts.

Quite a few customers will add supplemental forage fish in late Fall to feed the fish when they are not feeding pellets if they don't have Golden Shiners established in their ponds.

10x, there are no stupid questions on Pond Boss that are sincere.

[I post questions all of the time that deliberately reveal my ignorance. Assuming to know the correct answer, when I am in fact wrong, is much worse than just not knowing the answer on a topic new to the questioner.]

One of the problems that can occur due to overfeeding with pellets is that you are adding highly nutrient-rich material to your pond. If you feed the fish the same amount of food through the winter, and they let 90% of the feed sink into the muck at the bottom of the pond, then you have essentially fertilized your pond plants over the next growing season - including the filamentous algae and the invasive/undesirable plants.

I have read several threads on Pond Boss, where people at similar latitudes have significantly different winter feeding patterns for roughly the same fish distributions. That means it is very difficult to give "universal" advice.

I do not have a pellet program in any of my ponds, but IMO, the experts that do pellet feed their fish going into winter say observing the behavior of the fish is one of the most important data points to evaluate your proper feeding levels.

Watch the fish and as they slow with cooler temps cut back on feeding. Feeding during water temps below 50-55 F is generally not continued. Some people will feed small amounts of water softened/sinking pellets on warm days in the winter to help fish get through winter. Fish are cold blooded, so their metabolism drops in cold weather, and they don't require much food.

There are no dumb questions. We all started at the same place with 0 knowledge.

I have a customer where the Bluegill and shiners act like starving fish, then when the water cools down, the HSB and YP take over eating the pellets. He can feed the fish the day after ice out and the HSB and YP go nuts.

Was your question answered to your satisfaction? I didn't see any answers pertaining to your concern. At least not to my satisfaction had I voiced the concern.

I do my best to answer your question as I understood your concern. First, it's a great question in my way of thinking.

So you've fed all growing season and the feeding you have done have both grown and maintained a higher standing weight than the pond's natural fertility could maintain and support. In the fall, you cut off the feed in prep for winter. Wouldn't this greater standing weight of fish need more through winter than the pond is capable of maintaining? Yes. Yes, of course.

That is, unless the pond's standing weight is less than the pond can carry. There are two ways the pond's standing weight can be adjusted down. One is natural mortality while the other is harvest mortality (fishery biologist call that exploitation mortality). Natural mortality is "usually" not enough to adjust down the standing weight to below what the pond will carry on its own. In those cases where it is, you have experienced an unwelcome event, a fish kill (excessive natural mortality). So, harvest mortality is needed to keep the standing weight below what natural foods can support during those years when all is well with your pond.

If the harvest is performed continuously throughout the growing season. The standing weight may be fairly stable and NEVER exceed the weight the pond native fertility could maintain. Essentially a person is harvesting the gain as the gain is produced (or more correctly, when stable, the combination of natural and harvest mortality balances with the gain). A one acre pond may gain (with sufficient feed) 6 to 8 lbs per week in standing weight. This can be removed without the standing weight being diminished. If the gain is harvested as it is grown, then all fish will grow and at the end of the season (if they are below the standing weigh that natural fertility can maintain) they will not go hungry and they will likely gain a little over winter. This is how to use feed at its most advantageous.

Without sufficient harvest, the same thing that happens to ponds that are not fed happens to ponds that are fed. The growth of most individual fish in the pond slows WAY DOWN (in balance with natural mortality).

Thank you all for your responses. jpsdad rephrased my thoughts precisely.

I have only just started feeding about a handful of pellets a day. Some of the BG in my pond came from a pond where they were fed, I suspect those were the first to eat the pellets in my pond. Followed by one nice LB.

Based on the idea of "real" food in the fall, I have a small pond on the back property that had BG when I bought the land. I stocked fatheads and shiners there but the BG ate all the fatheads. I plan to pump it out and get rid of the BG then use it to grow bait fish for the big pond. If I wait until later in the fall, I could take all the bait fish and BG from that pond and dump them into the larger pond for the winter forage. If successful, maybe i can stock the little pond each spring and raise enough bait for the following winter.

I believe I also need to start removing some of the smaller bass as my pond has continued to produce more in the 8-12 inch range.

10x, if you drain the pond and remove all the BG, after you remove them, sterilize the pond with hydrated lime and get the pH of the water to 11. That will kill any remaining tiny bluegill that would be eating the minnows next year. I can't tell you how much to use, get yourself a pH test kit and keep adding hydrated lime until you reach that pH level. Treat all puddles, foot prints that hold water, etc.

Thanks, I'll stay the course. I'm still curious about when the size/gape size/etc. gets to the point that the SBS will see the GSH and FHM as food. We always joke that seeing all of them hanging out together, that's gotta change at some point.....one day a FHM will look frantically to a buddy, "hey....you see that?? He just ate Fred....and Bob!.....thought we were friends!....." It will be interesting to watch when things change....but I'm new to this.....

(1/4 acre pond Middle TN.) Okay, so I've been feeding regularly w / endurance pond blend since early August. 2x/day, morning/early evening, fish eat avidly. Two weeks ago they stopped eating completely. Tried a couple tosses got no action. Either morning or evening. From what I've heard this is exactly what I should expect as temperatures dropping into '40s on their way to even lower. So I stopped feeding at that point, and last week final stocking of the year w /12 5-7” HSB, also 2 lbs. FHM, 3 lbs. GSH. My assumption is I'll start feeding again in spring. Am I thinking right here?

Are you talking about air temp or water temp? Water temp is what you should be watching. Some fish stop feeding aggressively on pellets in 50°F water, others will continue to feed even if the water temp is in the upper 30's. It all depends on the individual pond. A customer will throw food out the day after ice out and his fish will feed.

Sometmes in the Fall when water temps are dropping the feeding fish will slow down and stop feeding until they get adjusted to the cooler water temperatures. Allow a couple days of cooler water temperatures and then try adding a handful or two of pellets on a nice day to see if some feeding activity resumes again until the next cold front.

BJN, I am in Monteagle, not far from you. We feed from April Fools to Halloween; this seems to fit a yearly feeding pattern. I had very aggressive feeding this year, but it all stopped the past week. Upcoming week is sunny & warmer, I will feed and if nobody shows up, I will shut it down until next April.

Regarding feeding: It seems to me that a lot of our posters throw way too much feed... We have a 54 acre lake and throw 2000 pounds over a 7 month period in various lake locations.

You bring up a point that I've researched and there seems to be different answers about how much per acre to feed per day.
If my calculations are correct (2000#/210 days/54 acres) is about .18 pounds per acre per day.

I started feeding March 15th and will quit this week, I'm feeding about 2# per day now but have fed as much as 5# per day this fall. My average is 1.7# per day for the year in my 2 acre pond.

My goal is to grow better than average fish of all species stocked for kids and family.

Largest of each caught this year is below.

LMB 3.42# - 113% RW - Stocked June 2023 at 1-2 inches. We don't really fish for them much.


CC 9.64# Stocked Sept. 2022 at 1-2 inches.


HBG-BG - 1/2# - Stocked March 2025 - 3-5 inches (We had stocked BG in Sept 2022 but did not know there were GSF and YBH that had washed in while the pond was being built and they were eaten)


I'd be interested in feedback from some of the experts on feed per day/per acre.

Bill, I'm not sure about water temp. Haven't actually tested it; don't have a meter! I know it's "cold" as I can feel it, but I understand a little more exactitude would be expected here.

Can you suggest the type meter I should get for the pond? I see lots on Amazon, but not sure what's appropriate for my 1/4 acre pond; when they say "pond," it could just be little koi/goldfish pond that are ~20 sq. ft., not ~14,000, like mine.

When I get the meter and test the water, I can answer your question.

Geez, 54 acres??? Holy cow.....I've got a puddle in comparison. But I like the idea of April Fools to Halloween; seems about right to me. We're obviously in for a lot colder than it is now, where it's between 32-48 or so.
I'll try tossing a couple handfuls out when it heats up even a little. But this past week when I tried I didn't get one nibble.

Your calculations are accurate although we target about 10 small areas consistently with our feeding.

Great pictures! fish growth data tells me you are achieving your goals.

Learnin,

I think that 300 lbs per acre-year makes a lot of sense for a small pond that is early in life. The total feed of 600 lbs adds ~300 lbs of forage potential to your 2 acre pond. Where ~179 lbs of forage potential is supplied by direct consumption of feed, (assuming Tulsa Climate) and the remaining 121 lbs is the forage potential resulting from the fertilization effects of the additional nutrients. How much of that potential is standing weight depends on the balance of your predators and prey but the feed gives you more poundage of fish per acre. Population #s being equal, this equates to fish of higher average individual weights than if you didn't feed.

I also think that hendog's 37 pounds per acre year also makes a lot of sense for a 54 acre lake. He may fertilize which is much cheaper than feed, but even if he doesn't fertilize, 54 acres is a lot of water. At the pond's current age (I think 10 years), it probably has a forage potential in the neighborhood of 400 lbs/acre and so ... well balanced ... 200 lbs/acre standing weight without feed or fertilization. So with 54 acres, more than 5 tons of fish. For one person, that's plenty to look after. Increasing fertility beyond that comes with a corresponding obligation for additional management (not the least of which would be aeration, additional harvest, weed management, etc). So for hendog, it makes a whole lot of sense to feed much less on a per acre basis. Still, feeding 10 locations the minor amount of feed he is feeding for his 54 acre lake gives him the fun of feeding fish, locations that concentrate fish, and for the dominant consumers of feed ... better condition and growth.

A final 2025 feed thought. We used 3 brands this year. Purina MVP, Cargill Triton 4512, Endurance Bluegill. All are high protein and were consumed instantly...Our cost per pound listed in order below.

Cargill Triton 4512 - $ 1.00 per pound
Purina MVP - $ 1.25 per pound
Endurance Bluegill - $ 1.60 per pound.