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Clint you have a lot of water at 8 acres. It looks like you plan to feed 100 a month for the first and 6th months of a 6 month growing season. For the intervening 4 months it looks like you plan to feed 200 lbs per month. This is 1000 lbs for the season and I will work with that figure.

It would make a difference, more in some fish than others. The 1000 lbs will do as much in your pond as in any other in terms of total gain spread across the population. It's not clear if you are working with a budget but I am getting the sense that you may not want to take things to the limit. The 1000 lbs seems to be a number that your are comfortable with. I will mention, however, that this is a relatively low rate of feeding (125 lbs per acre per year).

Sometimes it is good to look at what you are spending and then what you are getting so you can make a personal judgment as to the value and return of your investment and whether it is too much or just not enough. First let's consider the pond in its natural state. What weight of fish can it support on its own? Is it fertile country or infertile country where it is situated? A lot of water in the agricultural regions of Illinois can maintain 300 lbs/acre (in some cases more) naturally. Is your pond one of them? If so, without feeding, you could maintain ~ 250 lbs of BG and ~50 lbs of LMB for each acre of water you have with no feeders and no feed added. Just judging from the photograph, your water will probably maintain this weight of fish give or take a 100 lbs That's your starting point. Is 400 lbs of LMB and 2000 lbs of BG enough? If it isn't, then feeding can add to that carrying capacity. I will mention, greater weights and numbers of fish require proportionately more effort to manage (just population wise) and also will require additional investment for the energy that supports them.

Optimal isn't just Optimal. They have different formulations. An arbitrary 40/12 formulation will support around 0.45 lbs of BG for each 1 lb fed annually. It can do that IF it can convert at 1.5 pounds of feed to 1 lbs of flesh when consumed at 3% of body weight daily at 75F. I cannot vouch that Optimal BG can at that consumption rate so don't bank on that number. It may not be as good as that. Not dissing the feed. It is very good feed that is as good (probably) as most other 40% protein feeds or possibly even better. At any rate, this gives you a starting place that IMO is not likely to understate its support to your pond. So you can calculate how much additional weight that 1000 lbs of feed will add to the ponds BG and LMB populations. It calculates to 450 lbs BG standing weight and 90 lbs of LMB standing weight additional for feeding 1000 lbs of arbitrary 40/12 annually. That's pretty darn good, don't you think? A little less than $3 per pound of additional carry per year. I think it is an excellent value especially when a pond cannot carry as much standing weight as one would otherwise want. On a per acre basis you will be getting around 11.25 extra lbs/acre of LMB carry and 56.25 extra lbs/acre of BG carry. Is that enough extra? If not then you will need to feed more.

Your BG are already grown by the ponds foods. If they haven't yet, they will fill the carry capacity some time this year. If they have already filled the carry capacity of the ponds natural production of foods, you can expect the gain from 1000 lbs of feed to be in the neighborhood of 450 lbs of BG. At first glance it may appear that the BG are converting at 2.22. But actually no. 2000 lbs of BG are being supported by the pond's natural foods and this is equivalent to around 4500 lbs of 40/12. So the BG are eating foods that are comparable in digestible energy of 4500 +1000= 5500 lbs of 40/12. The Gross conversion is actually an FCR > 11. Most of the consumption maintains the population once the population has some weight to it.

But I just said an arbitrary 40/12 may convert at 1.5 above? Yes, but this requires consumption >=3% of body weight daily. If you have 2000 lbs of BG naturally and want to feed them at 3% of body weight daily we are talking 60 lbs per day just to start. The amount you would need to feed would grow every day as they grow. You are quite simply never going to do that unless you harvest them out every year as an aquaculture business.

This year, you can expect 450 lbs of additional BG carry with 1000 lbs fed. This is 22.5% increase in the average weight if you are starting with 2000 lbs of BG. Average is what it is. It tells you nothing about what an individual fish does. The feed (thankfully) will not distribute its benefit equally among your BG. Some will consume more than others and these you will notice. If it were to be equally distributed, the average BG would gain around 6% in length from the supplement (assuming standard weights). You may not notice that. But as I said, some will eat their fill while others eat none so you will definitely notice the partakers.

One last note. Almost all of the food in the pond is going to go towards maintaining your fish. They will rapidly grow into it. But because they grow into it, it doesn't make sense at all to consider feed an important contributor to average individual growth (unless a significant proportion of the standing weight is removed each year). Maintenance is all that matters. If you remove 35% of the biomass, next year all that was removed will be gained back. They will fill the carry every year but they will not grow past it. If you don't have mortality, expect the "average" fish to gain nothing in weight where the population uses all of the available foods for maintenance. If you stop feeding, expect all the gains in carrying capacity (gains from feeding)to be lost over the next 12 months.