Al,
Your entire first paragraph is great stuff. Would it be possible for Pond Boss people to replicate the RBT truck feeding in a poor-boy fashion?
I agree with your idea about periodically sending in un-acclimated forage fish to the LMB pond. Could people on the forum do that with a small BG forage pond. Estimate the optimum-sized BG to be fed to the largest bass in the big pond. After the BG reach that size, push a few dozen (hundred?) from the forage pond into the bass pond. Repeat every week?
The next year, you would have to start with fewer BG stockers in the forage pond so the BG grew faster to reach the optimum size that you would feed THAT season.
Your second paragraph consists of really tough questions! I am not a wealthy person, so almost all of my Pond Boss questions are about the "right" way to do something, and then I work to get as close as the budget and time allow to the optimal solution. (I suspect a lot of people on PB work under that constraint.)
Perhaps your "how much money would you spend question" would be an entertaining topic for a Pond Boss Live from Bob Lusk. I bet he has some great stories on that topic!
However, if I was managing a pond ONLY for trophy LMB, then I think I would calculate the maximum carrying capacity for bass considered to be a "trophy" size plus the capacity of their required forage. If that was only five 10#+ LMB, then I would stock six Florida strain female bass. That way it wouldn't be a bass pond, it would just be a "trophy pond".
I also like your hand feeding story. Several other people on PB have done similar things. Maybe the lesson should be to never remove valuable fish food from a pond. If you are culling GSF, then fin clip them and throw them back in the pond. For each big bass that eats those GSF, then that might be a lot fewer meals made out of something you wanted to keep in the pond.
P.S. Were you guys ever late to feed because you got hung up on a job? Just curious to hear if the big momma LMB was absolutely set on her time schedule, or if she figured out there were other clues to indicate it was meal time at the pier?
