We at the PB Forum lost our VERY BEST researcher, fisheries professional, tenured professor and well published author when we lost Dr. David Willis. He would have been our best senior author for a peer reviewed paper about success of SMB in pond habitats. Dave and I separately and as co-authors had several articles in PB mag about SMB in ponds.

Dave was the co-editor along with Dr Wesley Neal (senior ed) for the Amer Fish. Soc. book titled Small Impoundment Management in North America 2012. The book chapter that relates to our SMB topic was “ Stocking Strategies for Recreational Small Impoundments” Chapter 6 p155-176 by R.A. Wright – Dept. Fisheries & Allied Aquacultures Auburn Univ. and C.E. Kraft -DNR Cornell Univ.

Chapter 6 Section 6.5.2 Smallmouth Bass Combinations has a total of six sentences. Paraphrased - “SMB in mesotrophic ponds can fill role of predator. Prey species mentioned were GSH or RES; BG not controlled. Rates or timing of stocking not well studied. Those managers following guidelines for LMB-BG have been successful.”

IMO a research type of paper would be needed to achieve a successful peer review. For a peer-reviewed paper with high credibility we are going to need a decent amount of good data in the standard scientific format of Introduction, Methods, Results with Discussion including tables, graphs and figures.

Dr Neal at Mississippi State still regularly writes a regular article in PBoss Mag. One good option would for interested PBoss members for this topic would be to help fund, in combination with the Jesse W. West Research Endowment at South Dakota State Univ., a student research project. ewest (Eric West) would know more about details of the Jessie West student endowment. Dr Neal may provide some good advice for the SMB topic.