Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding Feeding fish to help growth not for main food supply

Here's my theory, if u were to feed all that the fish could eat in 15 min then fish would presumably be full after the 15 min. Therefore, not preying on natural food in your pond. Also making your fish harder to catch.

Im about to start a feeding plan with high protein pellets feeding once a day but only for 2-3 seconds. Thus, allowing fish to grow faster with supplement protein, but not making them dependent on the pellets, so if u have a good forage base your fish will still be healthy. By making these fish less dependent on pellets and more dependent on natural forage, they will hopeffully be easier to catch.

Any thoughts on this? do u think it will work?

Oh btw the main species im talking about are trout and Channel catfish.

Thanks - Jighead

From my limited experience, I could not "fill up" the fish after 15 minutes of feeding and found that the best time to fish was after feeding as all of the fish were congregated in the feeding area still looking for food. I also feed them food other than pellets in an effort to train away from pellet dependency, so far it works, but I am only working with a small pond and about 150 fish, neither catfish nor trout.

I have a pond where little bream(5-6") will suck up the pellets like a vacuum cleaner. It seems like they never get full. But I am not going to feed them all they can eat or else they won't know to eat other forage when I stop feeding this winter. But it sure is fun watching them eat pellets.

Jighead,

When I first started reading this forum and searching for information about feeding, the standard recommended approach was "feed enough that the fish will clean up in 15 minutes".

That approach may work for some, but I didn't even have to try it to know it wouldn't work for me. Three things are wrong with that approach, IMHO and in my situation:

1) as you say, the fish become more difficult to catch, which kind of defeats the purpose, for me. Even LMB, that don't necessarily eat pellets, eat the BG feeding on the pellets and become conditioned to only that food source.

2) if I feed that much feed in all my ponds, the simple fact is the amount of fish "crap" would overwhelm the pond environment and

3) my feeding bill would far surpass cable tv, gym membership, fly fishing supplies, etc.

I never have and never will feed that amount...even the amount I do feed, which amounts to about 2 to 3 minutes of feeding frenzy every day results in some of these bad happenings.

I have to add I do not have CC's or trout in my ponds, so that may be a different matter. My advice to you is to ignore the "15 minute rule" and find what works for you in your pond consistent with your objectives...