Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations YP management in SMB pond

Just not sure if the high population of YP and GSH will decimate any SMB eggs and fry?

Yes, but this is what you want in a trophy SMB fishery...if 99% suffer predation this limits recruitment for you and you avoid the SMB population management down the road.

I am also wondering if the presence of small fish indicates that the YP are still well fed?

Not sure I understand this statement - you mean the high population of small YP? Anytime you have an overpopulated species forage for that bottleneck size [4-6" YP] is limited - too many fish for the appropriate sized forage item - no forage = slow growth.

Not sure where the RES fit in either. They must be getting pretty big?

RES in your fishery IMO are not impacting anything negatively but carrying capacity, and I imagine their recruitment is pretty low due to density of YP population. They'll continue cleaning up your snail population and the fish that make it to age 3+ should end up being nice fish [8-10"+]. You probably have some trophy RES swimming as we speak. I treat RES as a zero negative impact fish with nothing but upside, generally.

You can probably answer a lot of your questions with more frequent sampling of the fishery either through angling, seining, or trapping and keeping good WR records. In summary - if your goal is to grow trophy SMB I would resist changing the dynamics of the fishery until you learn more - I think a strong albeit stunted population of YP will enable your SMB to continue to grow towards trophy status and keep SMB recruitment very low which also works in your favor. Hope some of my experience is helpful for you.