Thank you very much for the replies.

I did put together 4 homes of stacked black field irrigation tile in about 4 foot of water so hopefully those can give some assistance.

It sounds like possibly putting in some HSB this spring is a very good option so I can control how many big predators there are.

As for the eagles we had seen some decent sized LMB in the 12-18 inch range a few times lying in the yard/field with talon marks in it so I was apprehensive of stocking LMB since the eagles proved he continued taking those. will HSB hang out a tad deeper than the bass? Its unfortunate the the eagles will take fish weekly, but nothing we can do to prevent it as we dont want to disrupt the bald eagles.