Roy,

We should have rainbow trout again this year around Thanksgiving if you are interested let me know.

Also this is my fist post on this forum and after doing just a bit of reading I already am slapping myself for not joining sooner.

I'm only a noob with 18 posts, but welcome aboard!

I have a small pond with bass socked about 4 yrs ago. caught two this weekend and they aren'y healthy, not enough forage. Had 100 bluegill put in today, hopefully that will help. I would love to have crayfish, but I have sandy soil as well. I remember as a kid every pond had them and would fish them out all the time, it wasa good time. That's the first thing I did when I bought this place, bacon, string and off I went, nothing, no crayfish.

The bass probably devoured them all....just like they will devour the bluegill you stocked, if the bass are relatively large and the bluegill on the small side. A bass can easily take in a fish 1/3 of its length...so for example an 18 inch bass, which isn't that large of a bass, can devour a 6 inch bluegill.

I think that's one of the big positives for stocking Tilapia.
In addition to the other benefits like eating Filamentous algae they reproduce fast enough that they take some of the predation heat off of bluegill.
That is really the reason I was thinking of stocking crayfish. I was trying to diversify the forage base of my ponds.
It seems to me that the more forage species that are present helps keep pressure off on any one of those species. Also, the less pressure any species has, it is able to reproduce more which helps the other forage species etc. etc. it a positive circle.
I guess that is why fish feeding is getting so popular, it takes a lot of the labor and guesswork out of the equation.