I am a little late to this conversation, but maybe I can add a bit. My wife's and my pond is just over 1 acre and no more than 6 feet deep. It is stocked with LMB, BG, and CC. We didn't put them in there, but there are also crappie. The pond is a dug pond that is fed only by a well or what falls from the sky directly into the pond. It is also aerated. About five years, ago we decided to stock 100 6 inch WE as a bonus fish and to help control the LMB. It tuns out, we discovered, LMB love to eat 6 inch WE. We lost a bunch, but now after five years, the WE that survived are decent sized and there has been limited reproduction. We haven't recorded any significant amount of recruitment, but there is the rare 4-6 inch fish that shows up on the end of a line.
So, what I am saying is don't count out WE. However, Try to raise them to as large of a size as possible before release into the general population, or buy them as large as possible, or they are more than likely going to end up as really expensive LMB food.
