Does anyone have a scientific study of caloric densities of bass forage?
For example Trout and insects are really high, yellow perch and threadfin are in the middle and crawfish are low. But want to fill in the gaps with BG, RES, Shinners, GS and tilapia.
Looking for hard data/proof as opposed to a hunch.
One thing I haven't noticed mentioned in here is birds as a dietary source. Most of the my bass that I gut contain swallows in their gut. I have always wondered why in spite of having many of them each spring that they all disappear by mid summer. I am used to dealing with all the mud nests everywhere on all the farms and ranches I grew up but no such issue here.
Then we started catching our bass and nearly every bass we have ever caught in the 15 to 20 inch range contains this when I gut them..
One might consider some bird houses to bring in birds to the pond. Not only a good source of food but it is amazingly cool to watch a big bass track a bird flying low over the water and jump out of the water and take the bird right out of the air. It is crazy how capable they are of tracking the bird and knowing where they will be. Also cool to watch is the bald eagles diving down and picking a large bass from our pond.
Our bass subsist off of basically insects and birds, we put catfish in the pond years ago and they thrived the first two years and there were a great many of them but then the bass ate them all and by year 4 there were no more catfish. So we keep the catfish in the other 4 ponds. I would love to have some Koi in the bass pond but there is no way they would survive the bass.
I wouldn't say the ponds are unmanaged. I say this because there is human influence in the form of harvest. In your pics I did notice LMB throughout the ranges you mentioned harvested. Anyways, I always like to see and encourage harvest and use of farm ponds like yours.
So understanding that you are giving care to your bride and have a lot on your plate, I will suggest a couple of things to you that you can have your kids and grandkids do that can influence your ponds in ways you might like very much.
1. Actually first I would like to point out a great way to clean bullheads if you don't know about it already. My grandad did it this way. It's called shucking. There is a YouTube video here : .
2. Consider adding around 40 8" bullies to your LMB pond each year. Harvest them when they exceed 12". Should take no more 2 years for the bullhead to reach that size. They will take some insects away from the LMB but will provide more energy than that in YOY. Don't expect successful recruitment of the YOY. They probably will not reach sizes exceeding 4". So consider it a ladder that is done yearly. The stock rate could be lower or 10 to 20 higher. Just whatever the kids and grandkids can manage. This gives the LMB more fish to eat and will grow some dandy BH.
3. You complained about the BH in your small ponds being small. If you would like for them to be larger ... consider doing this. In the largest of your small ponds, add one (and only one) LMB. It should be large enough to consume the most abundant size of BH. Go with at least 3 times that length. You should see outstanding growth of the LMB. If not, it wasn't large enough. This arrangement should noticeably improve the condition and sizes of BH in that pond. You might even grow a 6 or 7 lb LMB. Use live bait to remove the LMB after around 4 or 5 years and replace. I have a friend who manages a pond with YP in this way. He introduced me to this concept of a single LMB in a small pond.
There is no study that I am aware of that focuses on the relative nutritional properties of LMB prey. There are, however, many investigations into the energy density and nutritional profiles of various organisms. Member ewest pointed me to a paper on Arizona NP growth rates where energy density of various species which comprised the diet of NP in the three lakes under study. The density units are in J/g wet instead of calories. This can serve as starting place into your own investigations.
Species................J/g Wet......Author ===========......======......================ Black crappie........4186..........Kitchell et al. 1974 Bluegill..................4186..........Kitchell et al. 1974 Common carp.......7524..........Cummins and Wuycheck 1971 Golden shiner.......4983..........Kelso 1972 Green sunfish.......4186..........Kitchell et al. 1974 Largemouth Bass..4186.........Rice et al. 1983 Northern crayfish...6153.........Stein and Murphy 1976 Northern pike.........3600.........Bevelheimer et al. 1985 Rainbow trout.........6069.........Rand et al. 1993
Provided prey is large enough to be retained by gill rakers and small enough to fit in a predators mouth and be passed into the gullet ....it constitutes potential food. If an LMB takes food in its mouth, it makes sense to swallow it if it can be swallowed in order to get the energy return of an energy investment. I would think that LMB which are guarding nests typically do not get a full daily ration and that such LMB may be declining. There is incentive to feed from that stand point if it does not risk the nest. IOWs it makes sense that it isn't purely for defense but a blend of defense and some needed energy for the task of nest tending.
I will mention that on most days that I fly fish I will hook up with a >16" LMB or >22" CC. The CC are much more rare however and it seems I only hook up when the light is very low near dusk. I have caught several >16" LMB this year on a size 14 copper john. That's ultra tiny. On Saturday, I shouldn't have went out because I was coming down with Covid and it was dang hot ... but I netted some GAM and fished for small LMB to stock a pond and for >16" LMB to remove. I am trying to shift the population structure in favor of BG growth. Anyways the gams ranged in size from 3/4 in to 1 1/2 inches. I caught 8 LMB ranging from 3" to 8" ... but guess what? I also caught a 12" LMB and an LMB > 16". I deliberately fished for both casting to them and both spotted the GAM and moved in to investigate. Stopping just short. Then each opened its mouth moving forward a little with a small flick of its tail engulfing their respective GAM. The GAM that caught the 16" LMB was less than 1 inch long and was a negligible proportion of its daily maintenance need. I don't know why fish that large take size 14 copper johns and little GAM ... but ... if we return to optimum forage theory we might come to the conclusion that the LMB taking these baits anticipated a net gain in energy.
My efforts to remove 16" LMB from the little pond didn't go as well. There is a huge bloom of BG in that pond from 1/2 in to 1.5in in length and it is very difficult catch BG that small for fishing but I did manage two but was broke off by two that were the size I wanted to catch. The roughly 1.5" BG I was using were near the lower limit of what is considered consumable (10% proportionate length). I was unable to catch BG at the optimum length. That segment of the population is not very numerous right now.
There is a huge bloom of BG in that pond from 1/2 in to 1.5in in length and it is very difficult catch BG that small for fishing but I did manage two but was broke off by two that were the size I wanted to catch. The roughly 1.5" BG I was using were near the lower limit of what is considered consumable (10% proportionate length). I was unable to catch BG at the optimum length. That segment of the population is not very numerous right now.
Do you have a throw net?
I am not very good with mine because I use it so rarely. However, it is fun to watch people bring in the fish when they are good with it. A few throws might get you a big haul of BG, including some in the size range you want.
I'm trying to get at is conversion rates for LMB when eating a pound of forage of a given species. Which species of forage (Tilapia, threadfin shad, crawfish or bluegill) is likely to give you the biggest pound of gain? I understand lots of variables going into this analysis and we can say it "all depends" . But can anyone boil it down to which of the 4 listed species of forage will (Likely-educated guess) hhave the best conversion rate, without getting into expendable energy to catch it or how much more babies a tilapia makes, or how big the forage is. Its a ROI question.
The other thing to take into consideration is the size of the fish compared to the size of the bass. It doesn't matter if the gams are 30% more the j/g of BG, if the LMB have to expend 50% more calories catching gams to equal the weight of the BG then the LMB is at a net loss. Size of forage matters too.
Esshup, the conversion of 6 to 1 is a decent estimate for all LMB in north Texas so long as one understands the conversion is for the excess over maintenance. In the example above the pond provides the maintenance. They won't grow without an excess of consumption above maintenance. Without the supplement the consumption is 6 times the weight of the LMB and the gain is zero. Because the gain is zero the FCR is infinite and is in fact meaningless. With consumption above maintenance, there can be conversion and a finite FCR.
Gains can be negative. Just take away some of their maintenance. They will decline to match what the consumption can maintain. Examples of taking away some maintenance? Stop fertilizing, stop feeding, use pond dye, fail to maintain alkalinity are a few examples. Even an exceptionally cloudy summer can adversely affect the production of food.
The skin probably wouldn't come off like it does with catfish. I have used the method with BH & CC. Have never tried it with BG or crappie.
When I clean BG and crappie in the round for pan frying, I do employ a variation of the concept. After scaling, I will cut on the dorsal side through the backbone. Then just pull the head off. The guts come off with the head. No cutting through the guts that way.
With trout, I don't scale. I will open the gut from the anus to about halfway to the gills. Then cut from the dorsal side through the back bone and then just pull off the head. Like BG and crappie, the guts stay with the head.
I will mention that I return the heads and guts to the pond either by fishing with them or just throwing them back. When I fish with them, I will catch 2 or 3 LMB for every CC I catch.
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