More than five years ago, when my son Jeff was building “our” pond, we visited with Bob Waldrop, MS fisheries biologist and owner/operator of Tyler Fish Farms, to get stocking recommendations.

At the time Waldrop was the only source for pure Florida LMB in our area, having personally collected and transported pure Florida LMB and CNBG.

My son was/is a LMB person and I was a HSB fan.
Waldrop cared nothing about HSB and derided the idea somewhat as TP&W, but talked endlessly about LMB.

I recall mentioning over populated/stunted LMB ponds and he discussed the role of harvest and importance of CNBG for forage.

I asked about catchability problems and he strongly denied the existence of this problem.
His comment, as I recall, that the catchability 'myth” was started by competitive fish farms that were reluctant to change old practices, and aware of his threat due to having stocked President Bush's ponds.

This was pre-PB days for me, and when I became active on the forum I brought up the subject.
I was so severely chastised by early forum members for even questioning the difficulty problem of catching pure Florida LMB that I never brought up the subject again.

Maybe Waldrop and TP&W are on to something not previously recognized?