As some of you may recall, I recently (2022) built and stocked a new 1 acre pond. Since then I have had some issues with my pond construction and as such have been in a holding pattern while looking at various things. During this time, I have taken the last couple of weeks and read as many threads as possible on this forum about raising Trophy Bass in a small pond and have a couple of questions as different threads appear to read to me to say different things.

My overall goal is to grow very large but "catchable" trophy bass. I read several threads about how the true monster bass that many people talk about are almost impossible to catch as they become hook smart and shy. There was a bunch of talk about how different people have different definitions of Trophy. My specific goals would be to have LMB that are much larger than your average bass but arent going to be winning any world records. I would rather be able to catch slightly smaller "Trophy" bass every now and then as opposed to never catching the "Monsters" living in my pond.

I stocked my Forage fish in 2022 with 600 4-6in Bluegill and 10,000 (about 44lbs) of Minnows. I plan to stock 50 LMB and 10-15 RES this year in Spring. I also have a Texas Hunter Feeder and plan to feed high quality food 3-4 times per day (as much as they will eat in about 15min)

Originally, I thought that I had the right amount of Bluegill in the 1 acre pond for my goal, as much of what I had previously read talked about stocking between 250-300 BG per acre. However I have read threads on here with people stocking 1000-2000 BG per acre as the biggest challenge with growing LMB is not having enough forage fish.

So now I am questioning do I have enough BG stocked in my 1 acre pond for my goals. I read the articles about the survival rate for adding additional fish to an already established pond with an active predator base and I know the odds as extremely low. I did read about the various things you can do to improve this rate, but it is still less than a 50% survival rate. Which mean, I would much rather stock the additional BG (if necessary) either now or with the Bass I plan to stock in order to increase the overall survivability rate.

However, I then read the articles about pond carrying capacity and that by stocking too many fish, you run the risk of either having a fish kill (various reasons) or stunting the growth of your LMB.

This is where I am struggling. It doesn't sound like carrying capacity is only for your predator fish and would include the prey as well. However in that case, how do we stock 1500 BG per Acre and not approach that carrying capacity issue? Is it that 50 LMB per acre will eat so much BG that the pond never approaches max capacity? Or am I misunderstanding things?

I plan to stock another 5k-10k (22-44bs) of Minnows this year and am trying to decide if I need to also stock more BG and if so, how much BG to stock. As mentioned, I plan to stock 50 LMB in my 1 Acre Pond.

I would appreciate any insight that can be offered!