Frank, you're on a good track...but remember the lake had some double-digit bass and a healthy food chain. Does that matter? Would that impact the fishery long term? If so, how? And what are the limitations?
Well, I am no expert but the conditions to grow 10+ lb bass means that ... up to 2012 ... that they did a good job culling and that smaller LMB weren't hijacking the food chain. If there were several year classes of females > 3lbs were represented in 2012 then any attrition would just allow these fish to continue growing. In as much as this is true, attrition of the larger fish would be a good thing. Anyways, such would be needed for a sustainable system and so the decline (if this condition was attained) might likely be gradual in the face of neglect.
The limitation, it seems to me is the recruitment of LMB and/or whether feeding continued. Termination of feeding would have reduced prey production of course and this might have... given the LMB had grown into that productivity ... adversely affected the large LMB. On the matter of recruitment, given there were a lot of large females in the BOW in 2012, I think this would have really helped to reduce recruitment. At least in the case where small BG are plentiful, a heavy cull of the largest males should greatly limit the success LMB spawns.
To grow big bass, one has to grow big bass. Sounds maybe oversimplified because I know a big effort as well as investment went into making the BOW a trophy BOW. But once success is achieved, it is easier to maintain than it is getting it there. Ultimately, nothing succeeds like success and long term satisfactory results can be achieved. So I wonder ... is this going to be a success story where the BOW maintained its self under continued feeding ... Or ... a story of how curtailment of feeding crashed the production of prey?
