No need to apologize what-so-ever, Bill... I am just trying to learn and I appreciate any little nuggets of wisdom and experience I can get... no timeline or expectation at all.
I get what you are saying. I sort of relate it to my father's high fenced ranch where they support more deer (mostly exotics) than the land can naively support by supplemental feeding (protein, corn, etc). A pond is probably similar in that there is a natural equilibrium that you can push a little with feeding, but it will always be tugging toward the natural balance.
Since growing trophy fish isn't really my goal, I'm ok with however it works out. I have a lot to learn when it comes to how to manage the populations so there is a win-win for the fish and for me.
I appreciate you...
Cheers,
Clayton
Sorry for the late reply Clayton. I just saw your post.
My thought was simply that BG are prolific and produce huge numbers of offspring per season. Without a predator to keep their numbers in check, they can tend to over eat their available forage and stunt. Right or wrong, I think of it in pounds of fish a pond can support. For example, if your pond can support 100lbs then it could be 200 8oz BG or 800 2oz BG. IMO With no predators, the BG population will move towards the stunted 800 or more. Adding food could work for a while to get the fish bigger but the pond only has so much capacity to process waste before the water quality will degrade.
Keep in mind I'm not a pro...just my 1 cent
