Anthro - I do not know much about your pond history so help me with this. I am assuming the pond did not have any bass in 2016 when FL-LMB were stocked?? If you now think your "main" LMB are the 2017 northern strain as 5 yr old fish and some are weighing 7 lbs (22.5") equals 1.4 lb gain per year - IMO it is good okay growth. Thus if they grow 1.2lbs by Fall 2023 (6yr old) they should be 8.4lbs. If you can WORK to maintain good sizes and amounts of forage items for these larger bass and if they gain just 1 lb per year then in 4 yrs (10yr old) some should be 12 lbs – Great. That is success IMO and SO FAR you are on the right path. Lusk in his new podcast at time point 7:10 says most LMB do not hit 10lb until 10 yr old is “more normal”. If your LMB are 12 pounds at 10 yrs you are doing several things right.

https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=activetopics&range=30&type=t

Have you watched Lusk’s new podcast for growing big bass?? At time mark of 7:50 he says your bigger 7lb+ bass can and NEED to eat big meals consisting of big food items for their meals; time 8:51. Your 7-8 lb bass can be eating 12”-14” bass – so they want big meals – IMPORTANT point to keep them growing at the 1 lb+ / yr rate. At 9:45 Bob says as the bass grow they need larger and larger foods for maintaining efficient growth of 1+lb /yr. Lusk says typical life span of FL-LMB will be 12-15 yrs (time point 7:15). If you do this right with bass 12 yr old some should be 12 to maybe 14 lbs. See my idea later.

Important for growing big bass is removing LOTS of smaller bass. Are you culling and working hard to remove the smaller 7"-14" bass using the RW guidelines to help allow or make available more of the APPROPRIATE SIZED forage fish to the remaining bigger bass? Bigger bass need bigger foods for proper efficiency of eating, body weight maintenance and growth rate. Do not over crowd your bass nor let them get overcrowded!. Remember for managing for big bass it means lower angler catch rates - it is a tradeoff; big bass having lower catch rates versus mostly medium bass that result in higher angler catch rates. .

Do you live at your pond? If yes and it were me, I would copy Bruce Condello’s fish growing method. Bruce fishes specifically for small bass 6”-11”. He might even catch and store some of these extra small bass in a live box or cage. With these small bass,,, he almost daily or daily hand feeds them to his biggest bass. To start this method, I would cut the tails off your small bass and at the dock maybe at first even stun them as you toss them into the pond. Your biggest bass will soon learn to wait there for your ‘welfare’ meals to them. This method if done regularly will put maybe 2 lbs of weight per year on these dockside ‘welfare’ bass. The method also puts your excess small bass to a very good purpose and use.

I doubt that all your 2016 FL LMB were eaten and not currently present because there should have been enough non minnow pond foods for those FL's that at least some of them survived and grew to 5"-8" in 2016 before the NorthernLMB were added in 2017. I think there is a very good chance that some of your now 7lb bass are the Florida strain stockers .

One more item. Lusk says 1/2 of all those stocker bass that you bought for stocking were "junk" as being male bass. These males will never grow to trophy size. The males are eating lots of valuable forage foods so do your best to get rid to them. Maybe try focusing on catching them off the spawning beds. during spawning season any thinner bodied bass are very likely a males. And when angling at spawning season also remove every smaller (10"-14") bass that you catch.