Hi OGK

Good to hear from you! Stocking strategies should follow one's goal for the fishery: Trophy BG, trophy LMB, or balanced fishery. If you are focused on raising trophy LMB, your description sounds as if you're off to a solid start. The tradeoff in many cases for trophy LMB fisheries are overpopulated and somewhat stunted BG. Unfortunately a trophy LMB fishery wasn't your original goal.

Trophy BG fisheries feature heavy populations of LMB which typically bottleneck in the 8-14" range and are low WR due to competition for forage [BG]. This allows the BG that do survive to prosper due to abundant forage opportunities and lack of competition [zooplankton, invertebrates, pellets etc.].

At this time it appears the fishery isn't skewed for trophy BG - so you have some decisions to make. I'm not a LMB expert, but here are my immediate thoughts:

1. Alter goals and aim for a trophy LMB fishery - this is the direction in which you're currently heading. Advice: Do nothing, but consider annual HSB ladder stocking of 10-15 annually depending your your harvest program.

2. Alter goals and try to achieve a balanced fishery. In this case I'd consider increasing your LMB population by stocking another 25-50 this Spring to help hammer YOY BG, and increase your HSB by ladder stocking 15-25 annually. The HSB will help control BG population 1-4" especially when they hit that magic 20" range.

3. Retain your trophy BG goal and turn things around by stocking another 100 LMB this Spring/Summer. Follow that up with HSB ladder stocking 25 annually. Once your LMB hit the 12-15" mark you'll need to grow your HSB in cages to a size safer from LMB predation [8-10"]. This can be achieved by purchasing 1" HSB from Arkansas through mail in the Spring and feeding them until late Autumn.

We'd love to see some photos of your LMB - see if you can get lengths/weights so we can help determine WR. With the abundant forage present [BG/FHM] I imagine they are doing very well and are well over 100.

Let us know what goal you decide to pursue and we will help you arrive there!

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. ~ Henry David Thoreau

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