After reading everything though I do have two big questions, do the bass fingerlings not eat the BG fry? Just seems like they would chow down on those if they were in heavy abundance.
LMB certainly do eat BG fry. As you said when they are abundant ... but another qualifier must be added ... when abundant in consumable sizes. BG produce offspring in cohorts with definite peaks of swim up. It is cyclic. So there are periodic lulls in the abundance, even to the extent that there are periods where YOY LMB do not consume enough to grow at their potential.
Minnows are different, they spawn and spawn and spawn. They are easier for 0 year LMB to consume and their energy density is greater too. YOY LMB will consume them over BG because they are more optimum forage.
What I meant by growing past a YOY ability to consume them is this. They grow so fast, there is a window of time where they are short enough and skinny enough to be one the menu. Once they grow past a 0 year LMB's ability to subdue it, they are off the menu. Consider for example, a BG that swims up on May 1 in DFW. If it grows at its full potential, it will be 6.5" by Oct 1st. A LMB swimming up on April 15 ... if it grows at its full potential ... will be 12.6 inches on the same date. The LMB is older than the BG and will never be able to consume the younger one. There was a couple of weeks in May where the BG was very vulnerable to the 0 year LMB. After that, it was safe because it was growing too fast for the LMB to keep up.
With minnows its different. They grow slower than BG and the window of time is really until they are gone. Plus they spawn and spawn and spawn. Years ago ... and I mean many years ago ... different combinations were tested. For the first year, BG couldn't hold a candle to minnows either in terms of LMB growth or LMB standing weight. BG prove their worth over time. LMB cannot extirpate them like they can minnows. Once an LMB gets to be larger than 20" ... it will take between 2 and 4 months for a BG to grow through the optimum consumption window of that LMB (here talking about warm weather when growth is good). So the cyclic spawning nature of BG doesn't affect prey availability for Large LMB like it does for YOY LMB.
