Langster - What state are you in??
Okay GOALS are very important . if you are trying to grow trophy panfish as in CNBG & RES then you really need to stock more LMB not fewer. If it were my pond and BG & RES have spawned I would stock more than 100 LMB in 1.1ac, maybe up to 150/ac. To get best "BG" growth long term one needs heavy predation of always the
current year class of panfish to keep their numbers low density so they always have plenty of excess food for optimum growth. Feeding pellets helps with maintaining abundant food, however too many BG without proper harvest results in less than an optimum trophy fishery. Too many fish and in limited water area with excess pellet feeding eventually results in decreased water quality and a less than optimum fishery.
Another option rather than 100+ LMB per acre would be to manually by trapping and or seining shallows to thin the current year class of sunfish in their first 1-2 years of life.
Once pond is stocked with bass, then it becomes your management task to properly harvest the "BG" crop to optimize "BG" growth in terms of long term rapid growth. Proper Harvest of BG involves best
numbers to remove,,. best
sizes to remove,, and focus
harvest on removing a higher percentage of females compared to males. Bull male BG influence how well and how fast the younger males or each year class grow. It is a bullying affect of biggest males suppressing maturity of the young males that enables them to achieve the best growth rate.
See this lengthy discussion about growing the biggest and best BG from our Archives. IMO the information also applies to RES.
https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=286872#Post286872
