Sorry to hear about the loss of your larger fish.
Sounds like poachers to me. Either otters or the 2-legged kind. (I have the 2-legged kind on my property periodically.)
Do you have a game camera up? Many of the newer cameras have a "time lapse" setting. I now have some more obscured cameras on my property set on time lapse so they don't need to be triggered to catch a picture of an otter or a distant human.
One time, I even had trespassers remove the chip from a camera that was covering my best fishing spot, but not steal the camera. Which is a strange morality.
I do have a game camera on the pond. And it’s up high enough someone would need to bring in a ladder to get to it. But it doesn’t show the entire shoreline. I guess someone could have got in, but I don’t think so. I’m not seeing evidence of otters either. Maybe I didn’t get the reproduction I thought I was getting. And all the SMB aged out after they ate all the YP little ones. There are still some YP present. Just not many. Might be some SMB also, but have been educated by all the previous dishing. Either way, we can get enough fish for a fish fry. Just the schools of mixed crosses pictured above.
I’ve always had great luck catching LMB. Maybe not as tasty as YP, but catchable. Ha.
Thx
