An update on how this pond is going. The RES situation has not been particularly encouraging. I have some but they are not overly large. The pond is not very fertile so they may just be growing slow because of lack of food. Many of the SMB are feeding on pellets and the ones that are on feed are doing very well. But likely very few RES are feeding on pellets so they have to depend on natural forage. The FHM are long gone from what I can observe or trap so the RES are down to bugs and snails.
Also I have made some mistakes on RES identification because I have ended up with some hybrids. Either I have transferred some hybrids from my forage pond (the most likely) or the purchased RES fingerlings had some hybrids in them. Now that I have SMB in good numbers in the pond I am not terribly worried about the hybrids. I just remove them as they are caught and move them to my old pond.
Below are pictures of a few of the fish caught from this pond in the last couple days. I have moved quite a few SMB from this pond to my main 3 acre pond.
Bob Lusk helped me with my hybrid identification during my PBF get together. I think I did ok as long as I stuck with 3"+ fish. But later I was transferring some 2" fish from my forage pond to this RES/SMB pond and I think that is where I mis-ID'd the hybrids and moved some of them also.
The hybrids take to the pellets easily so they are fat and sassy. I really like the RESxGSF hybrids. Just not in this pond.
