Don't know if I can add anything to this discussion but I can guarantee that my pond started with and has never been stocked with anything but HBG and I think they have reproduced. I began seeing them on spawning beds in the second year or third year, can't remember which, but they were around 5 inches long and trying to spawn. Despite the fact that in 4 years I have cleaned and eaten almost 200 of them and never found a female I occasionally catch some that are around 3 inches long. I think some of these look different. Some of the smaller (younger?) ones are more long bodied and lighter colored than others. To my eyes they don't look the same as the original stocking. My original stocking was 1000 HBG and 6 LMB. The hatchery told me I wouldn't need any more LMB than this because HBG don't reproduce much. I made the "mistake" (time will tell) of also putting crappie into the pond which may eat some HBG. Whether right or wrong the combination seems to be working in that I definitely don't have an overpopulation of small HBG. I do have too many Crappie, a fact that most of you would have predicted but in my small pond I don't seem to have trouble trapping them out.
