Watching fish feed can be an educational experience but it can raise as many questions as it provides answers. I keep thinking that if I can figure out why fish feed like they do I can catch more of them. Instead of catching more I just seem to get more confused.

I throw out floating catfish food for the bream in my ponds and enjoy watching them as they eat it. In the upper pond there are a lot of bream and golden shiners and they look like a school of piranha feeding, churning the surface as they grab the food pellets. They compete with each other and the food is gone within minutes.

Most of those bream are about 5 inches long and the shiners are up to 10 inches long. They hit the food so hard they push it up on the bank with the waves they make. The water is shallow and they churn up the mud, making the water cloudy where they are feeding.

In the lower pond there are not as many bream and no shiners. When I throw the food out there the small bream ease up under it and daintily suck a piece of food under. I can watch them as they take it from each other underwater until it is broken up enough for them to swallow.

These fish take a long time to eat the food I throw out and seldom make a splash in the water. They are smaller than the bream in the other pond and there are not as many of them because there are some bass in with them. I guess they keep the population down.

If I put a piece of food on a small hook and throw it out in the upper pond a bream or shiner will immediately grab it and I can catch all I want. They will even hit a bare hook if I throw it out while they are feeding. They are very greedy.