I'm one of those people who enjoy eating tasty animals!
Most of us do here but the veggie eaters are welcome too. It just about respect and when one has knowledge it's really hard to watch someone doing what he wouldn't do. You've received some good wisdom here and I think you have also absorbed it. It's all good, your pond is in its sweet spot.
You seem to have very strong opinions and its not that you are wrong but lets just say that you are not entirely correct. As with so many things, the truth is more a blend of black and white than just on or the other. Many waters are ... or at least were ... managed for the production of trophies. And by this I mean that management provided for the taking of very large old fish that had lived an abundant life. The member of the club gets a physical way to remember his accomplishment and the lake afterwards can now support and grow another trophy like it. In water, where one wants to continuously produce trophy fish over decades ... the entire population must be managed and this includes even the very large fish.
It may surprise you that it is easier to grow a fish from 6.5 lbs to 8lbs over 12 months than it is to maintain that 8lb LMB for the next 12 months. By that I mean it takes more forage to maintain the 8lb LMB. On a fixed ration, the pond will support no more standing weight than that ration can maintain. Mortality is essential to growth in cases where the water is supporting this weight of LMB at years end. IOWs there will be no growth (without mortality) because there is only enough food produced to support the year's end standing weight. By the time the standing weight of LMB is what the water can maintain, mortality (or the decline of competing fish) is the only reason individual fish continue to grow. This applies to ALL fish whether big or small. Right now your pond is in its sweet spot ... the time just before competition begins to take its ugly toll. Where will your pond be in 10 years and how soon will you be ready to start from scratch again?
So it is true that it is a huge mistake to over-exploit. One must provide for recruitment into sizes that can grow into trophies and it also includes trophies that have not lived sufficiently long. But it is just as true that populations that are exploited at rates that they can reasonably grow are populations that consistently produce new trophy specimens over time and consist of members which grow well throughout life.
