Ed,
Excellent post. I greatly appreciate you raising these questions. As a neophyte HSB grower, I would love to have the answers.
I'd like to add a question or area for discussion....certainly not to take away from your questions which are excellent, but hopefully to get more info on the table.
The additional area is water quality. I didn't start seeing HSB angling mortality until the Texas droughts hit last year....but I also didn't have relatively large fish until last year. I would like to know which is more of a factor...size or water quality or both? I do have aeration, but with the extreme drought, have absolutely zero "flushing" or refreshing of the water. This causes me to wonder with heavy artificial feeding, larger HSB and possibly less than great water quality coupled with 90 degree water temps, I have a recipie for disaster....all indications I have are just that...disaster awaits for the larger HSB when caught this summer.
Relative to this aspect, i.e water quality, is there a test I can have performed to measure this factor? I suspect, don't know, but suspect, it may explain variations from one pond guy to the next in HSB mortality rates. With high feeding, no flushing, and even with aeration, I'm really concerned that I'm going to loose a bunch of trophy (for me) HSB in a couple of weeks when all the relatives come fishing.
Anyone's thoughts appreciated and thanks again Ed for raising these questions for open discussion.
