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YES HYBRID BG DO HAVE LIMITED REPRODUCTION ESPECIALLY IN THE EARLY LIFE OF THE POND. AS MORE GENERATIONS OF HBG RECRUIT I THINK A LARGER PERCENTAGE OF FEMALES DEVELOP THAT CAN RESULT IN MORE OFFPSRING PER YEAR. See above post by Theo Gallus.
If interested in using HBG, you should read and study this detailed thread from our Archives.
https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=256325#Post256325

“”But will the smb need more minnows if it was just smb/perch?”” THIS COMES DOWN TO HOW BIG DO YOU WANT THE LARGER SMALLIES TO BE. THE MORE FOOD A FISH EATER GETS,,,, THE LARGER IT GROWS. The more forage fish present generally the larger the SMB and YP will become. If stocking pellet trained SMB-YP and they are fed high quality pellets routinely this helps grow bigger predators when minnow numbers are limited. Food as natural items or pellets grows more and bigger fish. Fish need some sort of abundant appropriate sizes of foods to grow. Always remember you are growing a crop. It doesn’t make much difference whether you are growing plants or animals.

Too many hogs feeding at the trough limits growth of all. To keep them growing you need to add more food or reduce the number of hogs. The management technique of keeping high numbers of small sized bass present results in low recruitment of the prey fish; be it sunfish &/or minnows.

For 7-10 years I had a local 0.3 acre pond with YP-HBG – SMB & a few HSB with weekly pellet feeding. This worked pretty good until a DO sag eliminated the SMB – HSB. Without restocking and some mismanagement the HBG offspring quickly overpopulated. Depending on predator density SMB and HSB I think could do a good job of controlling offspring of HBG because they have limited offspring. At times you may need to manually remove HBG offspring as noted above by Theo Gallus for his pond. When the predators are not adequately doing the JOB you need to HELP them to maintain the desired balance of fishes. Remember when using HSB they really should have a few added each year or two or three (ladder stocking). .

""I wanted to do lmb and smb but have been reading how that doesn’t work well either."”
LMB and SMB can be done together,, but for long term good numbers of smallies the SMB need to be ladder stocked to keep mixed SMB sizes present as time and mortality take its toll on old smallies. Our Form Member Sunil has used SMB with LMB and he could provide more insight for this topic.

Using HSB ….. “" would that be enough to help keep bg population in check?""
I think that SMB and or HSB will not do a good job of controlling BG; HBG yes but BG no. BG are too prolific with wide sizes to swallow for SMB&HSB. In dealing with BG one should ideally have LMB who are naturally evolved with best behaviour and extra large mouths to efficiently prey on sunfish. IMO it would take a high number of HSB/ac to control BG recruitment. HSB do NOT have as large of mouth as LMB and SMB. Mouth and gape of HSB is about 1/2 that of LMB.

As I recall deceased Form member George Glaisner (TX) used HSB in a small pond with BG. I do not remember how well BG were controlled. Other members should help verify this statement. HSB will need to be ladder stocked – a few each year to maintain mixed sizes of several year classes. Smaller predators are eating the small fish and larger predators are preferably eating the next larger sizes of prey. Density of HSB with BG would maybe need to be close to the standard or common LMbass stocking numbers per acre of 100/ac for controlling prolific BG. Other pond owners with HSB-BG should add information about this topic. Control of BG becomes more of a problem if there are other fusiform (slender) forage species also present with sunfishes. Would you rather swallow a can lid or hot dog?