9" bluegill is not a trophy to me; I caught several that size a few days ago at a pond I just started managing again after being in CA for ten years; I've only been working with the pond two months, and the bluegill are a little larger than they were when I started, but I was not happy with not catching any bluegill over 10", which I regularly did when I last worked with that pond, and for that matter any pond I had worked with for more than two years. It's possible your 9" bluegill weighs more than my nine-inchers at the moment, as the pond I mentioned isn't fed.
A decent-sized bluegill can still happen every now and then in a pond that's overcrowded with bluegill. Certainly the bass will get larger in such a pond, but my point was, Cougar clearly stated he would like good-sized individuals of both, which would seem to me to indicate a lack of focus on bass, and more of a desire for a balanced pond, which will still yield trophy-sized LMB and BG both, which a bluegill-crowded pond will not. It's very simple population dynamics.
