I just started regular feeding my 1 acre pond stocked with LMB, BG, HBG, CC and GC. The only thing that seems to be feeding is the Carp. I tried mixing the feed with cracked corn to attract others to the feeder but so far no luck. Has anyone use cracked corn for feed? Also, what is "starter feed"? I saw this mentioned in a few other posts and am not sure what it is.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Dan :
Welcome to the PB forum and glad you decided to post.
Starter feed is very small pellets made for very small fish. Sometimes it is called fingerling food. Some is higher in protein.
Some times it takes a while for fish to start feeding often weeks. Here are a few prior threads.
http://www.pondboss.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=10;t=000060 http://www.pondboss.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=10;t=000068 http://www.pondboss.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=10;t=000187;p=1
Dan, I've never heard of any fish eating cracked corn. Maybe some do.
Keep feeding. Sooner or later, they will figure it out. However, try feeding where the fish like to be instead of where you want to be. You may be more trainable than they are.
BTW, after 20+ years of messing with fish, I'm still trying to figure out why hatchery raised fish have to be trained or re-trained to eat artificial food. What do turtles know that fish don't?
Dan,
I mix whole deer corn with my fish feed and the channel cats love it. I recently caught an 8, 6.5 and 4.5 lb CC and they were full of corn. They tasted great. They do stir the bottom up some when you feed cause it sinks. I'm not sure if any of the other fish eat it.
Boy, I thought corn fed beef was good. Now, we have delectable corn fed catfish.
i worked in New Orleans on the Mississippi river on a push boat. we would move barges full of corn from the midwest to the grain elevators to be unloaded. at lot of corn fell into the water. guys would fish there and catch huge catfish.
Hummmm, sounds like a way to keep the catfish feeding longer in the fall...mix some in with the BG feed. It's hard to justify a 50# bag of sinking feed for a small pond.
I know people that "bait" areas with corn to attract catfish.
But for feeding isn't corn relativly low in protien?
Yeah Ric, corn may be a filler but really doesn't provide the protien of fish food. This year the price of corn is about 12 cents per pound. The only benefit I can think of is that it won't dissolve.
I looked at my ground corn meal and it is only 10%, but maybe unprocessed is somewhat more. I believe I remember that someone asked about feeding milo, may have been avhatsa. I would think this has a good bit of protein, as well as soybeans. I would be easy on the amounts fed so it doesnt swell up and cause problems.
There was a fishing show on TV (It may have been In-Fisherman), and the dude was shore fishing for carp. He took handfuls of corn from a can, and used a slingshot to shoot it out to where he was going to fish.
Then he fished w/ corn on a hook.
Anyone see it? It was years ago.
I have seen similar shows featuring that technique for carp. Supposedly carp are a prized game fish in Great Britain for bank fishing. And they practice catch-n-release. If I remember correctly, it was an American show with the guest expert from Great Britian. The slingslot technique is like chumming in saltwater. The guy used canned corn, not dried.
I remember the British expert saying that bank fishing is more popular there as most folks don't own boats for a variety of reasons. One being the high cost of gasoline in Europe.
Frank
Frank, I think that was exactly the same show; I remember that the dude was a Brit.
Each spring I normally keep a minnow trap set outside our back door just in case I get a chance to go trout fishing. There is a two week period when I find golden coloured shiners(perfect for lake trout) in the trap as well as the normal chub,etc. Last year my wife started feeding cracked corn to the Canada geese (just to drive our spaniel more nuts than normal) and I found that I had shiners right until the sunfish moved in to spawn when the water warmed up in June. They seemed to love that corn.
