What to feed a bass?

[fisher12889]

When I was a kid we had a huge pond on our property that we kept stocked with bass and channel cats. My dad let me raise a finger sized LMB in our 200g. When I left for college 9 years later he was over 2 feet long and was the funniest damned fish you'd ever seen. He finally died a couple years ago at the ripe old age of 15 and was just shy of the 26" mark. My mom had him mounted and placed him on the wall in the living room. Whenever someone comes over and asks where they caught him my folks tell them he was a pet. No one ever believes them. I really think in the next year or so I'm going to get back into raising natives. There is something satisfying about raising fish that are naturally found in the waters where you live, as opposed to fish from other parts of the world.[/QUOTE]

I couldnt have put that better myself! Its good that your bass is eating now, but try to vary its diet, try worms, krill, and native minnows, they might work better!

 

[Juszyk]

ive read through this whole thing thanks for the info
im getting a couple largemouths and need all the info i can get.
how big of a tank did you guys use for them and how was it setup??? planted at all?

 

[Miguel]

mine go crazy after bloodworms. Frozen bloodworms

 

[Juszyk]

mine go crazy after bloodworms. Frozen bloodworms

where do you get blood worms none of the bait stores around me seem to carry them

 

[marshallfishies]

i feed myn crickets, mealmorms, nightcrawlers, crawdads, goldish and cichlid pellets

 

[id10t]

Ghost shrimp, guppy (or other) fry, worms, grubs, ants, various larvae (both water and dry), pretty much anything that will fit in his mouth and is alive that he'd get in the wild.

 

[lumpyfish]

ive read through this whole thing thanks for the info
im getting a couple largemouths and need all the info i can get.
how big of a tank did you guys use for them and how was it setup??? planted at all?

Get them while they're still like 3-4 inches long. The least stressful way is to use a small hook without a weight. On a sunny day, many baby largemouths will hit bare hooks. When you get one just put it in your bucket and bring him home. He may not eat for a few days but keep him alive in a large aquarium and wait it out. At that age their mouths are already pretty big and they'll eat ordinary insects from your backyard. Feed him insects like ants to flies. So you probably won't be needing blood worms. Just feed little bass whatever you can find in your yard.

This is what I did for my largemouth. He started at 3 inches. He's half a foot now. Eats little bluegills I go and catch every once in a while.

 

[tedcb5600]

When mine were small, two wouldn't eat at all for almost two weeks. The other two ate whatever would fit in their mouths. I got them legally from a fish farm at 4 inches. Three of the four now eat pellets and are about 12-13" and my large female is now 4lbs. She won't touch the pellets, but she eats dragonflies, my young gold fish, sunfish, etc. whatever I put in the water feature. I started them out in my naturals tank....only 55 gallons, but moved them to my 2600gallon water feature to controll my goldfish. They even come up and eat things like worms out of my hand. Luckily my four koi are too big for the female to swallow.

 

[lumpyfish]

Heh. You still might want to be careful. Give your bass a few years and the koi will disappear mysteriously. Sometimes I hate the way they eat everything 3/4 their size. I had some expensive bite sized fish disappear before I learned my lesson. Other times it's really cool to watch them engulf fish.

 

[nativelover]

ive always had the easiest luck getting LMB to eat shrimp pellets...

but get some redworms, night crawlers, small crawdads, crickets etc...

if your bluegill eat pellets, the bass will learn very quickly to eat the same. they are pretty damn smart.