UPDATE: So this weekend a friend and I fished the pond in question for 2 hours alternating live nightcrawlers, soft plastics and a fly rod with poppers. We used the worms to see the quantity and size of the bluegill population. We had near continuous bites on worms pulling in dozens and dozens of bluegill sized 4"-7" and they were 80% CNBG and the other 20% were BG. We threw them all back in. We caught 9 bass in all. 7 of them on the poppers. and 2 on soft plastics. 3 were under 12", 4 were 12-14" and 2 were over 14". We removed 3 of the bass that were 12-13 inches (and ate them) Inspecting the bass stomachs yielded nothing...nada! completely empty. They looked healthy and not under weight - I just found it odd that the stomachs were empty.

I also hooked what would have been the largest bass to date on a popper. It took the popper and jumped straight up next to the boat shaking its head and throwing the hook. It easily was a 4-5 pounder.

As for the discussion on losing 50% of your water during the summer... it is a concern. After a drenching October through January that filled my pond for the first time - here we are a few months later and we are already short of normal rainfall by 10 inches. I can see us losing 2 feet of depth or more this summer. What is bad about that is that the water plants growing around the perimeter die in what previously were shallows, and they dry up leaving only a clay edge. Fish habitat destroyed.

"Our Life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, Simplify" -Henry David Thoreau -