Coupla thoughts.
First, all impoundments(water holes with fish) are different.
Lusk sez that 99.5% of the eggs laid will never develop into mature(whatever that is) fish. They get eaten. And that's not a bad thing. And, the larger bluegills play an important role in cropping their own and bass offspring. I've watched male bass trying to protect a nest with fingerlings from BG and small bass predation multiple times. That's Mama Nature at work.
Due to growing and feeding seasons, this stuff is regional. In the South with a longer spawning, feeding and growing season, there are few parallels between water holes here and those further North. Heck, my North Texas ponds differ from Al Halls East Texas ponds. He gets more rains and I get more drawdowns from Mama Nature. And the drawdowns, as much as I hate them, make more forage available to predators.
In the warmer climates with the longer growing seasons, I think we are more likely to have oxygen crashes due to having too many fish. Been there, done that and have had to clean up the mess more than once.
In our area, only Bluegills spawn enough to feed bass and only bass can control bluegill spawning to prevent an O2 crash.
We all try for balanced ponds. Heck, without our intervention, that's generally about 15 minutes during the life of the pond. And culling and cannibalism are our tools.
