On March 9, I tied a 3'x3'x4' cage to my dock. It has about fifty 4-6 inch channel cats and about a dozen 4-6 inch bluegill. This is an experiment.
I also put a pound of rosy reds in a separate small brood pond.
The water was still in the 40s when I did all of this. The fish were not yet feeding. As the water warmed, I started adding a little food to the cage. I was using a variety of pellet sizes, but I noticed that the smaller catfish and the bluegill would spit out even the smallest pellets. At the same time, I thought that maybe my rosy reds might need a little nourishment.
Using a small coffee grinder, much like the one used by Mitch Robins (Billy Crystal) in the movie City Slickers that caused the cattle stampede, I've been grinding about two cups of last fall's feed. I've been putting about a quarter cup in the brood pond for the rosy reds, and the rest feeds the catfish and bluegill. My feeder is also putting about a cup of Purina Fish Chow in at 8:00 AM and 6:00 PM each day.
The powdered fish food is so fine, it doesn't drop easily in the wind. About half falls outside the cage. It scatters all around the cage perimeter. As a consequence, the area around the dock has become a haven for tiny to mid-sized bluegill and LMB. As I drop this stuff onto the water, it starts to sink, and hundreds of bluegill and little bass just suspend themselves in the cloud, inhaling all they can. It looks like a scene from a Cheech and Chong movie.
My grand daughter and I took 10 bluegill out of the pond on Saturday for an evening fish fry -- at least 150 feet away from the feeding site. As we fileted them, we found that all were filled with fish feed.
I'm thinking that the cage has become a major fish attractor.
P.S. The rosy reds have been getting pretty frisky in the small brood pond. They are eating like teenagers. They are acting like college students on spring break. Last week I put in a whole bunch of 8-1/2 x 5-1/2 inch floating foam "craft pads" (breeding pads) in their pond ($5.99 for 50 pads in a craft store). There are also a bunch of frogs and salamanders that have gotten frisky in this pond in the last week or two. The whole thing is quite embarrassing. I think my little brood pond is going to explode in thousands of babies in the next couple of days.
