Totally love your comment. Given your success, I suspect there may be something we as community could learn from it. Although I have followed the growth of your LMB closely, I have not noted the details employed in terms of initial stocking of forage and forage supplementations.
With regard to the small size of lures ... I would agree that you are matching the hatch. Forage of comparable size is what they are eating. Regardless of what anyone may believe is most optimum, YOUR LMB seem to growing near the max limits of growth for your climate on forage less than 1/5 the length of your LMB.
Sometime ago, I posted on a paper called something like "Go big or small?". But in this paper, the authors assemble years of data from multiple state DOWs for consumption of prey by various predators. I personally suspected a connection between their consumption frequency curves and the profitability curve of optimum foraging theory. In their findings, the most often consumed prey (laterally compressed prey like BG) of LMB are about 18.5% the length of the predator. I asked myself, does it make sense that LMB would consume the most profitable prey most frequently? To me, this made alot of sense. On the other hand, I asked myself, does it make sense that LMB would consume the least profitable prey most frequently? To me, this made no sense at all. But what really makes sense to me is that LMB consume more frequently the most profitable prey that are available to them.
For what its worth, for your BIG girl who is now around 17.125" in length, a little larger lure could be more attractive. So I am suggesting that as your LMB have grown the size of the optimum lure may have grown a little too. For a 17" LMB, I estimate the optimum length of BG to be just a wee bit over 3" and for a GSH ... right at 4". I don't know if they make Strike King swimming minnows in 4" lengths ... but this may be more attractive for the BIG GIRL and less attractive to the smaller LMB she has outgrown.
