That's great growth on your panfish, 4CP. Catching 10" BG never gets old.

Seeing your thread also reminds me of Pat's situation with BCP, but in your case it is YP. I think factors are very similar but most important is the economy of the existing populations of lepomis. For real estate title, they say possession is 9/10 of the law and my grandfather used to say about land ... "They ain't making any more of it". Essentially, a pond community is an energy economy where the energy (the currency) is limited by sunlight and additional organic input (grown with sunlight somewhere else). Because food (energy) will be limited, it will have to divvied to the most enterprising fish in accordance with their competitiveness for available resources.

Lepomis, are pretty darn competitive and resourceful (due to reproduction) and are quite capable of squatting a big portion of the fixed amount of energy real estate. Just being in there in large numbers and biomass prevents other less competitive species from gaining a larger piece of the pie. Niches help some weaker species maintain a footprint in the mix but without a niche, weaker species can be extirpated. This is why I like Bill's advice so much. Removing the less desired species to open the living space allows the supplemented species to possess at least a portion of that space. Let's say the opposite were true, and most of the space were occupied by YP. In that case, they would release that real estate overtime time to the lepomis. Eventually, the reproduction by lepomis would squeeze the YP share and they would dominate then. These changes take time. But where you want to have more representation of a weaker species, just as you agreed above, overcoming the possession problem can only be accomplished by supplementing the weaker species at sizes large enough to survive predation combined with biomass removal of the less desired stronger competitor. I think from the management perspective, both actions will be required to achieve goals. The good news is that the pond is small enough that the actions are less burdensome than they would be in larger BOWs.

Feel free to reach out anytime with your thoughts. There is a lot I could share that might help and also much that I could learn from you.

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