i just placed another order for a couple more bags. my bg are loving it and so does my german shepherd. some of my 1 year tiger bass are coming to it as well. have any of you all noticed it sinking more now than before? seems like nearly half of it sinks. my sweeney feeder is set for 4 times a day, the action is so fast its hard to see if it sinks or floats, but i do throw in a cup full from time to time just to watch them feed right at the dock. the food seems like it may be a little more dense than before, maybe the noodles arent as fluffy as before?

Interesting, Scott. My Optimal seems to float, but as with you it gets eaten so fast I'm not sure if any of it sinks eventually.

By the way, how are your Tiger bass doing? Having issues with catchability? Getting ready to stock LMB and I'm torn between Tiger and Lone Star Legacy from Overton's.

this is my second pond with tiger bass. they were easy to catch in the old pond. these here were stocked may 2015.i havent fished for them much. i was told to wait until 2017 before i started removing them. i am not sure if they meant after the spawn of 2017 or when. please chime in if anyone knows when i should start removing them. with that being said my goal is trophy bluegill, i am not concerned with bass much. i would love to have the best of both worlds, but i think it would take too much time and effort on my part. i grew up bass fishing tournaments and never thought i would get tired of it, but the older i get the lazier my fishing gets! i like to catch and eat both. with my big bluegill plans i will let my pond get bass crowded which should make it easy to catch a mess to eat whenever. i use stubby steve pellets to fish for bg. i catch the tiger bass fairly often on them, so i'd say yes, they are easy to catch. i caught one at my old pond on a stubby steve that was 7lbs or so.

Scott, if you want big bluegill, you won't want to remove very many LMB at all.....Remove the biggest and/or fattest LMB. Leave smaller and skinnier LMB in the pond. You'll want lots of small, hungry LMB. Not many BG will get through the gauntlet of hungry Bass mouths, but what few do, will grow big.

What were your stocking rates on LMB/BG?

initial stocking february 2015
2500 fatheads
2500 sunfish (85 % bluegill 15% res)

stocked 150 bass 3 months later-may 2015

my bg are doing better than i ever expected, probably because they eat more than they ever expected. but, i do notice some 4-5" bg from time to time around the dock. not very many at all but that means some that hatched in the pond survived predation. and yes i plan to cull very few bass, just whatever i would like to eat. i may leave a few of the larger ones to keep the 5" bluegill under control.

i have done very little fishing so far, but my largest so far is a 10 1/4" bg and a 14 1/4" bass. i didnt get any weights.

Scott, this has definitely been the case for me. My first bag was from Indiana and it seemed to float all day. My last bag came from SD and it seems to sink much quicker. Some of it begins to sink as soon as it hits the water.

I like the idea of a floating/sinking mix. Floating so can track feeding response (also because it's fun to watch), sinking for fish that don't want to come to the surface.

My HBG are hitting it so fast, along with my YP (I suspect) it's impossible to tell if it sinks. The feeding is over in less than 10 seconds.

Yes I noticed this with my last order as well. Darker colored and about 30 percent of it sinks right away. The rest sinks soon after.

I have seen higher fat content feed will sink.

hmmm... I would think higher fat content feed would float???

I don't remove/takeout any of the original fish I stock. It is their offspring that need to be managed. If by chance one of the original stockers is a poor fish (condition , sick etc.)I will remove it.

I've only been feeding Optimal for a few weeks now but haven't noticed much if it sinking. This order was from SD as well.

Yes, you would think that fat floats right? The extruder making the pellets cant put air in the pellet with a higher fat content mix going in. This is why a higher %fat will sink and not float.

When I first changed over to this years bag of Optimal, my redears quit feeding within days, or at least decreased their feeding significantly. On top of that I noticed 5-10% of the pellets sank right away, and the ones that did float didn't do so for as long. I was concerned. But now my redears are feeding on it more aggressively than they ever have and seem to prefer taking the sinking pellets more readily than the floating ones. I believe what happened is that around the time I switched foods I had a hatch of some sort that my redears were overwhelmed with and didn't have any interest in the Optimal. Now they are back to feeding aggressively on the Optimal.

I just received 6 more bags, and I can't tell if any significant amount sinks. I hand feed some right off the dock several pellets at a time, and never recall any sinking.

You might take a large clear plastic tub with water and drop 3 or 4 hand fulls in to test if any or how much sink. Then just dump it in the pond when done. No waste.

Ask Sprkplug. Fish get conditioned to eating a certain sized/shaped pellet and when presented with something different don't realize that it is "food". After a few tentative pecks, they realize that a change has come into their lives. When I first started feeding Optimal last year, the fish didn't start eating for about 5 days.

His fish were so conditioned to eating Aquamax 500 that they wouldn't eat Aquamax 600. Yes, that small of a change.

I'm doing a trial of HSB food that is 5.5mm. It is labeled as "sinking" but when first tossed in the pond, it floats. As it slowly absorbs water, it slowly sinks. After about a minute it is all sunk, but from what I can see, nothing sinks more than about 18" before it is eaten.

When my dogs are all puppies, I feed them a bunch of different things. Lots of different raw veggies, and different sizes/shapes of treats. They get conditioned to eat whatever I toss to them, and that seems to translate to their food bowl. I have yet to have a picky eater, and I can switch flavors of dog food 100% overnight and they don't care. I have fed Purina ProPlan since the late 1980's and never have had a problem.

My fish eat any food that hits the water. They always have. None gets a chance to sink.

I understand that. But from the package of Optimal I received last year to the new bag this year, I didn't notice any visual change. That doesn't mean the fish didn't. But I'm guessing it had to do with the massive hatch I had around the same time. I very well may be wrong though.