What a great thread!

I'll chime in as well. First off, I started consulting/working/learning with Purina Mills as an advisor and field test guy in 1995. Back then, all they really had was 32% Catfish Chow. We sent a letter to Purina, asking them to advertise in Pond Boss back then, and received a phone call from one of their top guys back then. They wanted to meet. "Yes, we want to advertise in Pond Boss, but we'd also like to meet with you. We see the pond management business as a growing industry and would like to help design products specifically for that niche. We met, (I'll save the entertaining part of this story for an article in the magazine, or around the campfire one of these days) and spent a couple of days in the field, looking at lakes and some of the fish I'd been growing for clients. From that meeting, Game Fish Chow was spawned. It became one of their staple sales throughout the nation. Still is. It's a grain-based fish food. I started using it with quite a few clients. Bluegills ate it, grew well, or so I thought. From 1995 until around 2005, I saw lots and lots of 1 lb bluegills, with the best ones pushing to 1.25 pounds. I did this with trophy bass lakes, bass-crowded lakes, big ponds, little ponds. Results were consistent. The biggest bluegills hit a pound to pound and a quarter.

In 2005, started working with Dr. Mark Griffin, who I'd known for a few years. He was ready to ramp up the AquaMax line of products and make them more nutritionally complete. That was also the time I started working with Richmond Mill Lake. I knew that lake would get zero help from any natural food chain, so we made the conscious decision to make the fish dependent of fish food. Some of what we saw was expected. Some wasn't.

In that lake, after it was drained, renovated, and restocked, we faithfully fed the fish AquaMax, under Mark's and my guidance. Mark made several trips there where we'd sample fish and analyze them. I also had several other ponds and lakes under management, as did several other guys Mark trusted, where he'd analyze fish as he refined the diet. Over several years, Mark would refine the diet, tweaking the amount of fish meal, adjusting the vitamin package, fine-tuning the ingredients to best match the metabolic needs of bluegills and feed-trained bass.

In Year 3 of Richmond Mill Lake, owner Jim Morgan texted me a picture of a two-pound bluegill. I don't think he realized how big of a deal that was. It didn't take long for him to recognize it. Over the next decade of my involvement there, that lake cranked out literally hundreds of two-pound-plus bluegills. Then, we started seeing some knocking on the door of three pounds. By Year 6, Bruce Condello had caught two over three pounds. I have a photo of one on certified scales that was 3 pounds, 4 ounces. Several of the guides at that lake also caught several bigger than 3.

As all this was happening, I encouraged several other clients, and many, many others that weren't clients, to use AquaMax products. I can't tell you how many bluegills I've seen well beyond two pounds

There is no doubt in my mind those fish grew so large because of that fish food. No doubt.

To further the direction of this thread, I also used AquaMax products in my personal ponds. Two of those ponds were 1/10 acre hatchery ponds. Most of the moderators have seen/been in those ponds. Over a span of 6 straight years, I confirmed conversion rates of 1.3 pounds of fish food per pound of gain. Sure, there was natural food there, but at the end of each season, we'd harvest, weigh, and count all the fish, all size classes, and I'd sell most of them to stock new ponds for clients. Each year, the yield was a little different regarding head count (recruitment wasn't totally predictable), but the feed conversion rate was.

With 42 years of pond management, feeding fish, dealing with aquatic plants, water quality, water chemistry, and seeing the results, I have zero doubt the higher protein feeds are much, much better, much more digestible, cranking out less waste than any of the the grain-based fish foods. Further, from the higher protein, fish-meal based fish feeds, I've see interesting upticks in aquatic insects and periphtyon. Dragonfly, damselflies, and other aquatic insects seem to indirectly benefit from well-fed lakes.

Yes, there are other variables such as fish population dynamics, but this thread is about feeding fish and quality of fish food.

As Forrest Gump may have said, "That's about all I have to say about that".

Have a great weekend.