Hey Kyle, sounds like you have a good project to take on. I would suggest that you familiarize yourself and your fishing lakelot friends with the use of the relative weight charts and how to apply them to your lake populations. Here is a good place to start reading...
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=160456#Post160456I'm no expert on the topic, but it makes good sense to track and evaluate your catches and react accordingly. The premise is that if your BOW has a size range that is low in relative weight then those fish are hungry. You have a couple choices here, try to create a food source for this size class AND/OR reduce the numbers in that size to make more food available for the remainders. It certainly gets more complicated than this, but my example is to just wet your whistle with the concept.
I also sounds like you may have the right conditions to grow larger perch/sunfish types, but if your goal is large bass then you may have a bit more work to do. Read about large blue gill growing conditions here...
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=189988#Post189988The very basic concept is to have a large population of bass or predators that eventually get overpopulated and growth stunted. These overabundant predators will eat a lot of the BG offspring but don't get big enough to eat the full grown sunfishes which allows them to prosper and grow big. This concept does not lend itself to trophy bass however, but learning about this condition may help you evaluate your lake.
With that size of BOW, you will need the cooperation of your neighbors once you set up size restrictions and slot limits. I would think that certain fish sizes will have to be taken from the lake without exception to have an impact and at high quantities. Hopefully the experts here will give you more experienced advice.
