To me it makes perfect sense. If you stock a pond such that "if a bass goes to sleep with it's mouth open then it will wake up with a full belly" then you have reduced/removed the "hunger" strike.
If it please the court I'd like to introduce Exhibit A. Let the record reflect that these are actual words as written by
THE Pond Boss.
To understand how to impact catch rates, you must know what makes a bass bite a hook.
What are the reasons?
Big bass don't grow larger unless they eat...a lot.
Reason #1) They bite because they are hungry. Small bass run in schools and are quite competitive.
Reason #2) They bite because they react to the stimulus of something hitting their "zone". These are "reaction" strikes. Aggressive...bites to fight for food or to be the first one to hit something. As larger fish become the "alpha" fish, they become territorial. You'll find those larger fish in an area which is conducive to everything they need (habitat)...such as close food supplies, safe place to hide, shallow water to deep water quickly and so on. When a fish bites here, it can be either #1 or #2 or a third reason.
Reason #3, a "defensive" strike. This occurs when anglers are sight fishing...female on a nest, or when casting into an area and a bass is just doing its job.
Hungry fish feed when they are hungry...that's one of the "catch 22" issues of pond management. If we do our job and produce lots of food, Reason #1 is eliminated. If we don't have habitat for large fish, there goes most of Reason #3...except one month of spawning activity. That leaves Reason #2, which typically exclude larger bass.
