jpsdad,

Thanks for taking the time to type out all of that good information. [My post is referring to his BG post above. I see jpsdad was also typing out a LMB post while I was typing.]

Hopefully, the title hook (BG growing like crazy) from the OP will drive some traffic to this thread for other people to read up on big BG.

I remember your previous post about Swingle showing great BG weight gain on gams. I don't know how much of the diet of a large BG is minnows and how much is the available invertebrates in the pond. (Or even LMB fry, etc.) I just expected their gape might have some profound effect on their diet, because it seems so tiny compared to the other fish I commonly catch.

In a Swingle type experiment, if there were fewer gams but a great abundance of some small zooplankton would the BG have shown as much weight gain? (Correcting for the relative nutrition between fish protein and zooplankton protein.)

It sounds like a clear water pond is definitely your recommendation for big and/or "trophy" BG. In that circumstance, would you recommend periodic fertilization? The resulting algal bloom would hurt water clarity for a little while, but you would jumpstart all of the food chain items that directly feed BG as well as the indirect food chain that results in fat minnows to also feed the BG. After the bloom cleared, the BG should be able to slaughter the once again easily visible forage.

Supplemental floating food would be easy to find during the bloom and then you might be able to cut back during the post-bloom natural forage boom. It seems that would make it easier for management rookies (like me) to push the total weight of BG a little without significantly risking a crash from pushing the pond to carrying capacity ALL of the year.