10. Here is a pond management tip that has several benefits. If you are harvesting small BG in the 2"-5" size range, you can use them as live bass food.
1. It removes small BG,
2. It feeds and grows your bass,
3. It focuses your time away from bass fishing as much and slows the chances of creating hook shy bass, while productively spending your time still fishing and managing your fishery,
4. It is a creative way of using small BG that otherwise usually are discarded.
5. It usually improves the balance or ratio of BG:bass in a pond managed for big BG.
6. It is a way to collect and sort BG, put them in a cage, raise them to maturity and restock males into the pond.
7. It is a way to entertain the kids or keep them occupied as they fish for small BG,
8. It is easy and fun.
One interesting way to feed surplus small BG to bass is to slightly or significantly impair their swimming ability and toss them into the pond. The bass will quickly learn these fish are "easy pickings". I impair swimming ability of small BG by cutting off portions of their tails and or fins. These fish then swim abnormally. Some fish managers prefer to cut all fins or most of the fins off rather than just one fin. Single or double fin BG (& sometimes small bass) amputees have been found to survive bass predation despite having lost one or two fins. Removing all fins makes it very difficult for a fish to survive very long with larger predators present. Bass and predators are attracted to odd or abnormal swimming fish who are usually more vulnerable and easier to catch. Bass who typically have to survive by "working hard" to catch fish, take advantage of this wounded prey fish situation. When you harvest a larger number of small BG, you can put a lot of them in a live box or small cage to hold them for several days. This way the live food feeding of the bass can be spread out over a longer period without taking time to harvest more BG.
11. Posted in another thread by ewest source:
http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=197161#Post197161Because fish growth often is limited by food availability,
supplemental feeding is a logical tool to improve the condition of fish in small impoundments as the energy cost for bluegill to feed on pellets is small relative to the high caloric intake, which can be 4-5 times greater than those fed natural foods (Schalles and Wissing 1976).
Some commments about this were:
A. Cody says - Go pellets! It seems that the higher quality pellet food (Aquamax carnivore or Optimal BG) is a more logical and wiser choice if one is trying to produce trophy BG.
B. esshup - I wonder if those figures are still accurate due to the age of the study. I wonder if the high protein, easy digestibility food that is on the market today was available back then.
I noticed a marked difference in BG growth switching to AquaMax from 36% floating catfish food in the past year.
C. Ewest says - esshup the difference you noticed I bet was in large part a result of the protein source difference between catfish food vs. AM (plant protein vs. fish meal/oil).
Esshup says: So far I have not read the study just others' analysis of it. I think that the major point is that energetically the BG don't have to expend energy eating pellets while regular foraging uses significant energy. As a result the net energy gain from eating pellets can be 4 to 5 times higher than normal foraging. This is the first time I have seen the difference quantified. Higher/better sources of protein may also make some incremental difference as well. There are of course possible negative aspects to fish relying too much on just pellets.
