Deb you wanted my opinion here goes. Bob has stated much better than I can the reasons for fertilzing. I base my opinion on past experieinces. I have shocked 3 ponds where they heavily dye the lakes. Two were not fed one was. THe one fed was not too bad prety much a typical pond as far as produciton goes.
The other two with constant dye to keep it blue had extremely low fish porduciton. The amount of small fish was almost noexistant. DYE LIMTS PRODUCTION! We use alot dye, office parks, and to lesser degree subdivisoin ponds where fishing is secondary to aesthetics. However it hurts a fishery, period. I know you recommend feding with dye but you are still limitng primary production with the use of dye.
I think I know how it might help with GG growth. You stated in another thread you want to limit the reproduction, somethign like that. Well dye will acomplish this, with supplemental feed helping grow the GG I can see that working.
ANother point... we fertilize very lightly when we have heavy feeding, it is not neccesary b/c like you said the poop is fertilizer.
One last thing b/c I just gave out this advice yesterday, pretty ironic really. Client in TX had your dye, loves the color and has our feeders feeding the ponds. He thought everything was fine beacuse the bluegill fed like crazy when feeder goes off. However, the small bass were tiny, extremely slow growth. Why?, the dye has limited the amount of reproduciton/recurtment of tiny fish/insects that fed the small bass.
My suggestion was to fertilize if necessary to maintain 18-24 inches. He would still get good color this way and ok to dye November through March if he wanted too b/c too cold for produciton at that time. He has $110K well pump for water source when needed or would not have suggested this.
On another note he had bought Reward from Ken's for cattail control. I told him to not use it and save for submersed weed growth. Reward will burn the foliage but does not control roots. I went to town to get him an aquatic labelled glyphosate to use instead. Do you recommend Reward for cattails or was he mistaken?
