Thanks for the feedback guys. Especially the part about trying to balance at an inherently unstable point. That makes sense. And gives perspective to the challenge of managing this pond.
The bass were stocked about 25 years ago when the pond was built. I don't know what happened for the first 7 years. After year 7 the pond was fished off and on but very little was harvested. Starting about two years ago I started fishing it more often and harvesting all the bass that looked skinny, which was most of them. Over the years it's produced a few 8 pound LMB (or maybe the same one caught multiple times).
Last year I fed 2 bags of generic catfish food. This year I switched to GFC. I'm on track to do maybe 4 bags during the growing season. Water quality hasn't been an issue at all yet.
I think I can add some formulas to the spreadsheet to keep track of the % small, med, large and fat, avg, skinny. At least for the LMB. I've wanted to do that anyway so that I can monitor progress in a more objective way. What would you think about: small = 0-10", medium = 10-14", large = 14"+. And skinny = <90%Wr, average = 90-105%Wr, fat = 105+%Wr. Should I do the breakdown for each size class? Since presumably it would be helpful to know (for example) that most of the large fish are fat and most of the small ones are skinny.
For the BG, this is just an estimate based on what we've caught and what I see at the feeder and around the banks. 50% large, 25% med, 25% small. The large ones are fat. And the other ones are skinny to average.
Just for entertainment
here is a video of me throwing some GSF to a few LMBs that have grown accustomed to the free meal.
