Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Any Trick Getting Baby CC's Up To Feeder?

I stocked about 200 little 6" C Cats last Fall, and though I have had the auto-feeder going for the past 2 months while we were out on the road, only BG are coming up to it. Is there anything I can do to entice the C Cats to pellet feed? I am using Aquamax floating pellets, and I feed once at day break, and once right before dark. There is an abundance of this year's fry, both BG and LMB present. The pond is 20' deep and appears to be very healthy. I aerate 24/7. There are about 85 adult LMB that strike anything you cast in there, but they never come to the feeder either. (We have suspended all fishing this year to allow the LMB to get established with no pressure.) I suspicion that the LMB are content with the BG fry and YOY, but would that be the same situation with that small of C Cats also? I would like to see at least a few of them so I can determine their growth and when I can start eating them. :p

I have a small 1/4 acre pond in California that is stocked with about 250 cats. My experience is that the little ones seldom come to the feeder. It may be too dangerous for them as the larger cats show up in large numbers and get into a frenzy while feeding. Just a theory though.

D-C:

I stocked 6"-9" CC and they took to pellets as soon as I started feeding. They were, however, the biggest fish in the pond. MY BG, OTOH, took 2 1/2 years to really start eating pellets.

Many of us have had greatly differing experiences on when different species of fish begin feeding. I think the bottom line among fish that take pellets readily, like BG & CC, is that they start eating pellets when they are hungry.

I doubt that 6" CC will prey on small fry/fingerlings much, but I am sure that they are finding enough to eat somewhere in the pond or else they would show up for pellets. You may have lost some CC to predation (how big are the LMB), but the spines on a 6" cat are already formidable deterrents to being eaten. So I bet most of them are still there,

I don't know about the CC's but if the largemouth weren't pellet trained they won't have any interest in the pellets. I'll bet anything the CC's will show up when they get larger.

That's a good report. Thanks! I'm going with Robert's "danger therory" for starters, but also, I agree that there is plenty of food for them to ignore the pellets altogether if they wanted to. I hadn't thought about it much, but this is the first active year with LMB in the picture, and I have had to cut the feeder back from 10 sec bursts that was cleaned up in 8 minutes or less, to a 3 sec burst that has a little food left over every time. So even the BG are seemingly afraid of the LMB. Interesting.
Theo: The CC were inroduced at about the same time as the LMB, at 6"~~8" on the CC. The LMB ranged from 1/4lb~~3lb. My own therory at the time was, since feeding time for the past 2 years looked like a African Pirahna Feeding Frenzy, a literal boil of vicious, man-killer BG, the LMB would be content with the other food supply than to deal with, like you said, the CC spines. I'm almost ready to buy me an underwater camera (Cabelas) to "look" into the situation. And no. The LMB were mostly adult, so no feed-training there. Maybe that will change with the LMB fry that are present? Stay tuned...

If you put some bigger bass in there, you just may not have any CC left. A 3 lb. bass can pretty well mop up on 6 inch CC.

DD: There are maybe 4 or 5 monster LMB in there, and the remainder are in the 10 to 12 inch range. But with the bazzillions of BG (of all sizes) that were present when I introduced the LMB and CC, wouldn't the LMB be prone to go after the BG? I just can't see 5 LMB cleaning out just the 6 to 8 inch CC. I am thinking more and more, due mainly to the absense of BG at the feeder that the LMB have everything hiding down low, as there is no cover in there yet to speak of.