I do not formally feed anything in the pond, but if i see any grasshoppers or crickets on the way down I will throw them in. Yesterday, surprisingly, I threw in 3 grasshoppers while we were working on a new dock and they did not get eaten after 15 minutes. So either all the fish were spooked by our presence or it was just a bad weather day, either way the crickets/grasshoppers usually bring them running but not always. I might go buy a bag of dried mealworms and just work of habituating them instead of fishing for a while.
Bill, I absolutely agree with your ideas but there is a small issue. The pond itself is semi-natural and does not have a way to drain it, I really want to increase the depth but doing so by digging seems unlikely. My solution to both this and the vegetation issue was the pond circulator, in theory I am planning on it reducing weed coverage and, to some extent, increasing depth by angling the current down, kinda like power loading a boat. While this might add depth in places at the cost of reducing depth in others it is a sacrifice I am willing to make to get better deep basins. The pond was not always weed choked, this is a new phenomena that I believe is caused by the increased aeration making more nutrients available.
What is the purpose of removing large LMB in this scenario? I thought they would help with culling GSF? Either way, I have not been able to catch one in years so removing any seems heavy handed to me. I will double down on fishing for them once the circulator goes in (next week) and see if any normal bass techniques work.
