These are great points Bill.

How should one approach these problems and develop strategies to mitigate them? Particularly, the development of hook shyness. What strategy might circumvent or reduce the effects of removing the most easy to catch? One thing that I have considered that could help is to select fish caught by artificial baits and tag them for growout. One might be able stock the tagged fish at a known age, eg F1 LMB females if a good source could found. They should do well if space is cleared for them by culling.

Perhaps then just pull out the stops for culling the unselected fish. Use live bait to catch them if they won't take artificial baits. Maybe juglines could help remove more fish with less time? I think I were to take on a project like this I would employ tactics like that in order to do more with less time. Also, I think on the forage front I would want reduce the adult BG standing weights by probably a minimum of 40-50 lbs per acre-year to free space and increase production of YOY BG. I don't think I would fish to remove these fish. I think I would soak traps to remove them. Maybe some large Z-Traps. I think I would want to use those same traps to monitor the forage population ... particularly forage population in the consumable sizes. But I would want to record all fish so perhaps I could glean from the records conditions where YOY production was running on all cylinders. It would definitely be a big project that takes a lot of commitment. 12 acres is a lot of water.

10 to 12 lbs are some big LMB. I didn't figure there would be many of those tackling a crowded pond by culling. To improve chances for more of those size fish, maybe cleaning the slate would be a more reliable path to getting there.

It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so - Will Rogers