Snapperhead, you are definatley on the right track for managing for bigger LMB. Concentrate on culling your very abundant year classes of LMB, these will typically be slow growing and body conditions will be much thinner year round than other year classes with less competition for food. LMB over 16"-17" should be released even if that particular year class gets somewhat crowded down the road. Once LMB get to 16"-17" they start eating smaller young of the year LMB and they will help with your culling plan by thinning next years LMB hatch. They will eat significant number of young LMB up 6-8" in size. The more LMB over 16"-17"+ you have, the better. The other clue I look for is missing size classes of BG. You noted that you were missing BG in the 2-3" size range which tells me there are probably not many LMB over 12" in your pond. One of the problems we have had over the years is an absence of BG in the 2"-8" size range. Our LMB were typically hitting a wall in terms of growth at a 15-16" size range as they were trying to sustatin themselves on very abundant BG that were less than 2" long, they really need BG in the 3-6" to keep growing well. It may take up to 3 years of heavy culling to get a lasting change in the population dynamics of your pond.
