Hello, AS, and welcome.
Sounds like you have a nice place with a lot of potential. To make really meaningful recs, more info, such as relative weights of the bass and their appearance, would be helpful, but I think you've given enough info for preliminary thoughts.
Lots of possibilities....however, I think if you look at the last couple threads abou bass heavy ponds, you'll have your answers, with added forage pressure coming from your cats. Every one of those cats is eating as many BG as a 6-8lb bass, and you're likely seriously forage poor at this point.
IMHO, anything that you do will be pretty futile unless you really whup the bass population. Your observation about noticing some improvement after removal of bass is telling. No way to predict exactly how many fish or pounds of fish to remove, you need to keep records of fish caught and relative weights, when the numbers start to improve and continue to do so, you'll know that you're getting there.
