Jpsdad - I also much appreciate your posts. My water is very eutrophic even though it has never seen a single pellet of feed. I have chara coming out of my you know what. The phosphorus content of my water is high coming right out of the ground so nutrient removal is going to be something I deal with forever. I am becoming very interested in the topic. Once I achieve reproduction , my initial target was to remove 200lbs of fish per year starting in year #3 after reproduction and then evaluate/adjust from there. I should be able to add some pounds of crayfish on top of that. After reading some of your posts it sounds like that might not be enough to make a dent in the phosphorus load.

I learn something new everyday! I had no idea crayfish were so high on an energy density list. I have to imagine that fatheads, another component in my lake, are rather low in energy density. This gets me excited to see what kind of growth my Brook Trout will see off of these guys!! Doesn't take too many this size to make one pound of crayfish.

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]