Originally Posted by Dave Davidson1
Lusk: A pond is like a garden. It has to be managed through culling.

Double +1

crimsondave,

To add to the comments already here, based on the goals of keeping and maintaining your large catfish and the presence of GSH, I think the approach that will result in the most successful outcome will be to try to grow very large LMB. There seems to be a very large surplus of forage in the sizes large LMB prefer. To be sure, this means the growth of your BG is slow and ultimate BG weights are low.

Given you have been feeding on a ongoing basis, to remove the feed would put the pond in starvation mode. In other words, to curtail feeding, you would need to remove some fish. It is unclear what may happen to your feed trained bass if this source of food were removed. That would depend on their dependence on the feed.

One last thought, I would not increase the feed rate. Given your BG are stunted you will be very disappointed in the results. When a fish increases in length by 25% it doubles in weight. So if the average size of your BG is 4", doubling their weight only takes them to 5". If you are feeding at the modest 1 lb/acre-day rate that is commonly recommended it is clear that its going to take a huge amount of feed to improve the length of your BG and the water quality is going to suffer. To make matters worse, this will only make the prevailing population of BG less accessible to your predator fish.


It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so - Will Rogers