I do the same thing as Shiner Sam when I feed my smallmouth bass using various types of excess forage fish. I think this feeding method will help you growing your biggest bass at a great yearly rate toward the 10 lb mark. Shiner Sam Training and Feeing his trophy bass. Notice the hand fed bass are hook smart.
If your pond always has lots of appropriate sized forage fish this is what is possible in your pond from watching Sam feeding shiners to his bass.
Also keep in mind that as the pond ages and fish poundage increases be watchful of the water quality. Notice the pond's water clarity and apparent water quality in Shiner Sam's second video.. Your pond will always need "happy water" to keep those bass growing well and especially when not too crowded. Crowded bass are ALWAYS food limited and growth rates always slow down.
Remember --- without having bass regularly eating pellets in "healthy happy water" you will only safely grow 50-60 lbs of bass per natural ACRE that is 30 lbs maybe and just maybe 40 lbs of LMB in 1/2 acre as primarily pellet fed bass. Pushing the natural limit more than 80 lbs of bass /ac can be grown per acre but this is a high risk situation for the longer term situation and numerous pond owners who have done this have had significant fish kills for learning what should not be done.
Do the math for a weight combination of sizes. For a 40 lbs/ac reference guideline this is 4 six lb'rs and maybe three to four 3 lb'rs as 12lbs, and a couple 2 lb'rs; all totaling 40 lbs and does not include the 12" (ea. 1lb) and smaller sizes of bass. Don't forget that Happy Water includes a good aeration system that could include both good bottom based aeration and an efficient surface aerator for use during low or marginal DO events. A short term low DO event in summer will kill your largest bass first. This is a very discouraging learning event when you have been working so hard for years to grow those biggest bass.
A 6 lb 21" LMB fast growing plump bass in 2026 will / should sometime in 2028 be 23'' and be around 8 lbs with 4 of them by themselves will total 32lbs.
It would be ideal IMO if ALL the bass in your pond were just fast growing females. This way you have a much better chance of all the bass in the pond being optimum sized fish.
Down the road, if you have a fish kill from too much carrying capacity and with just 1 unlucky hour of 'bad' water, you can use the above information for creating a new 1/2 acre fishery as an all female bass pond. Five 8 lb bass equals 40 bass lbs close to maximum for 1/2 acre of happy water.
By a standard food conversion ratio chart, for five 8 lb bass (40lbs) to stay at a standard weight body condition, they will or need to eat to total of 240 pounds of live food per year for all five to just stay at a healthy plump 8 lb. This as calculated by 'new' standard weight maintenance guidelines, that says a LMB needs to eat six lbs of live food for each pound it weighs to stay at maintenance weight to be able to grow. Then to grow to the next pound (usually 1") it needs another 8-10 lbs of more food/s per year.
Then - for all five 8 lb'rs to grow one additional pound to be 9 lbs,,, collectively the five 8 lbr's will need to eat another 80-90 more lbs of live foods for a grand total of around 280 - 290 lbs of live foods consumed in one year. Each 8lb bass per year eating 48 lbs maintenance + 8 to10 lbs each for growth to the next inch. For sure a BIG challenge in a 1/2 pond. Do you know how many pounds of forage fish that a 1/2 acre pond will grow or have when at carrying capacity? Supplemental foods are almost always needed in small ponds when trying to grow really best growth, big bass.
