It continues to bother me that there's (by my estimation) an 11-12" and a now probably 5.5" LMB that slipped through our Great Fish Massacre earlier this Spring. As I've mentioned, they're uncatchable at this point, and very wary of the cast net too. Should be a 50% chance that they're of opposite sexes, so this still nags at me. 2 LMB shouldn't have a huge impact on our harvestable YP numbers in the coming years, but if they're of opposite sexes and pull off a spawn, our YP experiment goes down in flames.

It makes perfect sense that the bigger one at least is uncatchable, because it's the only big dog in the pond, really the only fish that can eat a BG over 2". I'm guessing it would target BG in the 3-4" range, and a few days ago I realized we have probably 100 3" BG in one school. This bass has nearly unlimited forage all to itself. I'm confident/hopeful that it's old and stunted, but it still should be able to pull off some nice growth during its hopefully last couple years on Earth, and big LMB is exactly NOT what we want in our pond. We're hoping for a fairly high density of medium sized YP (and maybe the occasional BG) for harvest, i.e., we're not really shooting for trophies of any species, rather we plan for a YP heavy pond with fairly heavy harvest of YP for eating, and a few BG for eating, with the BG harvested very heavily every year. I'm thinking of leaving a few larger adults in (like 6, which is 12/acre) to produce some forage for the YP and hopefully keep the little BG from sexually maturing too small. The issue as I understand it is that our YP will only be able to eat the BG until they get to maybe 1.5", and won't be that great at catching BG until the water cools down, so even with our larger BG brood stock being very limited in numbers and us being stocked relatively heavily for YP (150 at now 7-9", which is 300/acre), the BG will still probably produce enough YoY that we'll have quite large numbers get through to 3"+, which means old jerkface 11" bass will continue to have unlimited forage. Also, young jerkface 5.5" bass has probably grown 0.5-0.75" in the past month, so I think it represents more of a problem longer-term because it'd have a higher top-end potential.

With that previous run-on paragraph in mind, this weekend I decided to conduct BG YoY warfare via trapping. I want to remove as many YoY BG as possible to hopefully make our LMB a bit hungrier and more aggressive so that we can catch at least one of them sometime this year. In the past two days, I've removed approximately 170 YoY BG, all of which I fed to our YP. Suffice it to say that feed trained YP will eat cut bait.

Questions:
1. Unconventional YP forage: Given that I'm not able to drain and nuke, thus couldn't establish a more ideal minnow or shiner forage base (and Dad doesn't like the idea of having 8" bait stealing GSH), and that we are pellet feeding pretty heavily (30#/month, which is 60#/ac/moth), what should I plan to use as our YP's forage base in future years? If we can get the LMB out, would it make more sense to run this closer to a single-species YP pond, letting the YP lay eggs without removal and letting a few YP get bigger, and then just letting the larger YP forage on YoY YP? Or, would it be better on the path I'm currently going, leaving just a few breeder BG to produce plenty of YoY BG as forage, and removing YP ribbons aggressively?
2. Removing the LMB: Would it be a good idea to catch and stock a few SMB from the creek, I'm thinking 10 in the 8-12" range (I want small enough to not eat our now 7-9" stocker YP, but big enough to help eat some 2-3" BG to compete with our 11" LMB)? I would like to put in a few SMB to help manage YP and to some extent BG against overpopulation in future years, but Dad now is "a perch man" in his own words; he has no interest in 1.5lb+ bass anymore and would rather just be able to fish with his ultralight, so he would prefer a bass-free pond. I've warned him that both YP and BG will likely overpopulate without any bigger predator, but that we could try one year without bass or WE to "see what happens" (i.e., to show that the fish stunt). Given all that, I'm thinking these SMB could be a more or less put and take operation this year, just as a temporary measure to help compete with the LMB by putting 24/7 pressure on the 2-3" BG forage base in the hopes that one of the LMB will get hungry/aggressive enough to actually take a bait so we can remove at least one.

PS: I know that someone would like to remind me that there are surely more than just these 2 LMB remaining, which is possible. I know, I know. I feel somewhat confident that there are only 2, given that our water is extremely clear and we have virtually no vegetation or cover, so I can see most all characters on any given day. We'll have to wait and see how this LMB story unfolds.