Sounds like a good lake. Sounds like it would be fun to fish. Your friend is doing all the right things except one, that I see. Crappie are agressive feeders. Removing them all is good. The stunted bass evidently do not have enough food, once again take em out. The mistake lies in taking out the bream. Leave them in there. All of them. Bream are the backbone of your food supply. Prolific breeders, make lots of babies to feed all those other fish. You need all of them that you can get to make babies, stunted or not.

Why are they stunted, let the bass grow and they will eat the little runts and leave only the bigger ones. Natural selection will take care of the stunting. No big bass to eat the smaller bream, they breed and stop growing. Let the bass get bigger and eat the runts, only the big will survive and breed more big. But at this point, if you have all the predators that you speak of, you need all the food that you can get. Bream are the best way to get it. In summary, take out all the predators that you can, except big bass (thats is what you want in there), and allow the forage base to expand.

Nick Smith