jpsdad,
That is an interesting observation. I have seen threads where people have considered a female-only LMB population for their small pond, so they would only have "trophy" bass at the top of their limited carrying capacity.
Your idea might work if you took out the BG and had a LMB/FHM pond. The young minnows might survive long enough to keep a large reproducing population of FHMs in the pond.
However, I think trout have different eating target sizes than LMB. I also think they are "lazier" than LMB and like to conserve energy hiding in the slack water behind boulders, etc. (I am sure there is a proper biologic term, rather than lazy.)
Record 40#+ brown trout are sometimes caught on tiny flies. I think wbj's trout might like to graze on slow-swimming minnows as they go past. However, large LMB seem to prefer larger meals. (Maybe the small bass and BG in a typical pond rapidly clean out the small forage, and the large LMB don't have much choice BUT to eat large meals?)
It would certainly be a fun experiment to monitor a pond with only 3-4# bass and FHMs and observe the bass weight gains over time. With no "large" forage, would they learn to just target the largest FHMs?
