(1/4 acre, hour east of Nashville, HSB and SBS both ~5-8", FHM, GSH.) So, it's cold here in middle TN, fish are deep, no bites if I try to feed so I gave up a few weeks ago. We're in the 30's now, sometimes 40's/50's occasionally, but here's what I'd like to know: What is my guideline for when to resume feeding.....when it's maybe steadily in the 50's? 60's? And, in planning for spring, I know Jones has stocking/pickup days for Nashville area in March and April. Any particular time where it's best to stock the forage fish? Going forward I want to maximize size on the HSB especially.....no idea how they're doing except I believe they're all alive; haven't seen any floating (stocked 12 in late Oct., 5-7") They're still way too small to feed on the SBS, so I want to make sure I have plenty of forage in there, in addition to regular feeding when I resume in Spring.
With regard to your minnow forage stocking, I think because you already have predators in place ... delay stocking until temperatures are warm enough to for spawning. Just google whatever it temp that is. Right now, consider adding some spawning substrate. Something like dense brush (eg cedar) in the shallows. Denser the better to make it more difficult for the predators. I would favor a strong stocking, the way Sunil has done, this allows them to get good spawns off before the adults are consumed by predators.
In My Opinion - everyone is entitled to providing advice on this forum as long as the poster is civil, respectful and couteous. However, note the advice may not be accurate nor what one wants to hear, nor what is best for another person's pond goals. Each reader needs to evaluate the advice or get more opinions as for how to proceed.
BJNick, I have seen referenced that a Texas Hunter feeder feeds around 1/4 lbs/sec. So in ML10, that's about 3/4 lbs per day. In a 2.5 acre pond, he is starting with around .3 lbs/acre day. It is good to get the fish which have been off feed over winter ... back on feed. I think the suggested cup a day to start is a really good recommendation until you are confident that they will consume what you plan to feed them.
You should have a plan. That is ... an understanding of how you will limit the amount of food that you will be feeding annually. You should understand what that is on a per acre basis. For example, 4 - 40lb bags is 640 lbs of feed per acre. Contrary to what some say, you can feed too much. For example, fish will consume more feed than they can efficiently convert. So ... if you feed to satiation, this would likely occur. They would eat more than they can efficiently assimilate and poop out the rest. The pooped out feed and wastes of metabolism are recycled in the food chain.
The most efficient way to feed is in proportion to the metabolism throughout the warm months. This entails increasing the feed rate in warmer water. I think most members adjust feeding in this way though probably guaged from the response to feeding and how long it takes to finish off a feeding. A schedule based on metabolism for a Knoxville location looks like this:
You could feed more than that. Swingle limited a 45% feed to 10 lbs/day with BG. Above that, they experienced fish kills. This schedule does not exceed 40% of that. Aeration would allow higher feed rates with less risk of fish kill. When feeding protein limited to 2.24 lbs/day (7 lbs/acre of 32% feed daily) ... blooms were maintained in TP production ponds. That was a nitrogen mobilization rate of .35 lbs/day or about 10.64 lbs nitrogen per month. The maximum rate of nitrogen mobilization from the schedule above is .2624 lbs/acre per day. It's about 75% of the nitrogen mobilization in the TP study and so you may see a decent bloom during the warmest part of the schedule. IDK. Whatever the case, given you have a new pond ... it would be interesting to follow your feeding and associated secchi throughout the season to document effects. Would be great if we did that ... if we had a baseline of your pond's alkalinity.
I'm surprised you didn't give a Fourth Order Runge-Kutta Analysis of that data. Perhaps you can find one in decades old literature and take credit for it.
A belly that big and the fish still wanted to slurp down your lure.
Makes me wish you had a forage pond available. You could catch a few of your most feed aggressive BG that also have good "catchability", and use them as brooder pairs in your forage pond. Their offspring would be awesome fish for supplemental stockings back into your main pond.
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