food fish

[leupy]

It must be time to start feeding, Jones fish called and I will be getting sixty pounds of shinners on tuesday.

[Luns]

Whats something like that cost if you dont mind me asking

[Salmonid]

Wow, sixty lbs of Golden Shiner is a ton, how big is the pond?? You must be feeding HUGE bass and catfish with them as they get to 7-8" within a year and spawn like crazy, I put 20 lbs in my 1 acre pond 3 years and I must have Millions of em..yeah, seriously. I got them for my Blue cats and Hybrid Striped Bass and they are all too big to be eaten by anything else. Just curious why you went with GS vs Fathead Minnows, Im picking up 25 lbs of fatheads in about an hour. Mostly for my perch and Black Crappies to jump start them since i wont start feeding for at least another month.

My FHM are about $6.30/lb and where i get mine (ATAC) the GS are $7.75/lb with there OGF.com discount through April

Salmonid

[leupy]

My pond is small less than an acre but lots of big bass, cats and hybred gills. I will start feeding floating fish food in May and another shiner feeding later this summer.

[Luns]

I kind of do the same thing in a sense....i have a small pond id say 1/2-1 acre full of pretty much the same kind of fish stated. I cant get into feeding the fish pellets though im afraid it will take away from the natural feeding habits of the bass. However once a week if not twice i make a trip to the river and seine for siners and also set out crawfish traps around the area and have a slaying. As soon as i step on my dock its almost like a dinner bell you can see the bass starting to swim around waiting. How long have you had your pond and what size bass have you seen?

[lucas@atac.cc]

ATAC recommends 20-40 lbs of forage (FHM or GS) per acre per year. This is generally spilt between a spring and fall stocking. You can also add monthly or weekly or daily; you really can't overfeed your fish with live forage. I strongly caution against the addition of wild caught forage. The stocking of wild untested fish can have devastating consequences. Introduction of disease and invasive species are very real threats to your pond.

Also, LMB have to be trained to consume fish food. If you continue to feed after stocking trained fish the LMB will continue to eat the fish food. However, if the LMB go without fish food they will quickly revert to 100% natural foodstuffs and never eat the fish food again. Species such as BGL or CCF will readily take fish food even after long periods of not being fed.

[leupy]

I put the pond in 2001 I feed shinners and fatheads twice a year and floating fish food during tyhe summer. My bass are up to four pounds, cats over six pounds and blue gills over eight inches. The pond is a kids pond and I maintaine it so kids can catch fish most of them just release the fish but if they want to eat some that is okay I will clean and cook them but I don't allow them to take them to put in the freezer.

[beemoth]

here's a food fish I caught today........
9 more and it'll be dinner time:)

[leupy]

While I am afraid to argue with a biologist my bass eat the shinners or fatheads and then go right to eating the floating fish food with a vengence.

[lucas@atac.cc]

I am talking extended periods without fish food. They will basically go all winter without and then take it again in the spring, but go a whole season without fish food and see how many strike. LMB have to be feed trained in the tank and even under traning conditions not all will accept fish food.

[Salmonid]

I fed today for the first time, went light, about 1 cup full and it took about 5 minutes before the 1st HSB came up and started hammering it, then a few shiners and then a few gills but the Hybrid stripers were realy hitting them hard so it look slike its starting with the food, No gold fish, YP or cats yet but even my Red Eared Sliders were 5 ft in front of the dock getting in on it, pretty cool.

Salmonid

[PondFin@ic]

Lucas, I'm not disagreeing with you but it seems like at my place pellet size has a lot to do with bass taking the pellets. If you haven't tried Aquamax Largemouth, you should give it a shot. My larger bass show little interest in the 1/4" pellets but attack the 3/4" ones. My hybrid stripers do the same but will readily eat the smaller ones once all the big ones are gone. The channel cats don't seem to have a preference, eating whatever is closer. I believe it's about the size since the main ingredients of the other Aquamax pellets I feed are basically the same. A big bass would rather eat 1 big bluegill or shiner rather than chase down 30 or 40 minnows so I figure it's the same for pellets too.

ATAC sells Aquamax products, do you have anyone using the Aquamax Largemouth?

[Lundy]

I recently purchased some aquamax largemouth because I had a 12" bass last year that trained himself to eat pellets.

He is around 14" this year and still takes the 500 size pellets readily but has only taken few of the larger largemouth pellets.

The other two pet bass that come in waiting on a shiner handout have taken a few of the large mouth pellets also but about 1/2 the time just spit them out, but sometimes they don't.

I was hoping my little self taught bass would influence some others, still too early to tell the outcome.

My remaining cats, I think there are 9, coming into the food take what ever the bass won't take of the largemouth chunks. I plan on just leaving 4-5 cats. last year we removed close to 30. It will be easy to select which ones we want to take and too catch them the way they take those big floating chunks. A little hook and a rubber band and it's a done deal.

My bluegill LOVE the Aquamax 500, huge preference when i switched from standard fish chow stuff mid season last year.

I think I'm going to put in 20-30 pds of tilapia when the man come through in late may. I just need to call him back and confirm and give him some $$$$$ of course.