. . . What I'm gettin at is am I understanding that correctly. I guess I just assumed if a bass was under weight for his length that he could of just always been under weight from lack of food rather than he had lost weight. . . .
The multispecies interaction is complex and dynamic. A couple of things to think about.
There is a fish production technique called something like "species combination with disappearance of one species". Under this strategy the production is maximized for a predator by stocking it in combination with a much weaker, highly reproductive prey species that is able to utilize and store biomass resulting from lower trophic production that the predator is either not capable of utilizing or is of insufficient number or weight to utilize. The idea is this. The prey fish accumulate and store food for the growing predators that ultimately grow to sufficient size and weight to extirpate the prey fish over the production period. TIME is important here. Harvest the predators too early and there still remains a lot of food for them. Harvest them too late and they are beginning to wither for lack of food. It's easy to imagine the RW of the predators rising to a peak and then diminishing ultimately to negative weight growth under this scenario. A BOW with withering predator fish is much like this, but of course not entirely so ... because the prey fish are able sustain a reproducing population.
Even so, the interaction is dynamic. The LMB never stop trying to grow. As long as appropriately sized food is available ... they will continue grow until they get sick or die. Because they are the apex predator, unless mortality intervenes, they MUST outgrow their environment. At the other end of the spectrum the same can occur. The prey fish, under insufficient predation, can eliminate grazers of primary production causing algal blooms, poor prey growth, and the conditions ripe for DO events.
Another way of looking at this is that _everything_ in the pond wants to reproduce and grow. Nothing can prevent them from outgrowing their environment except interactions with each other and active pond management. Left to their own, a balance is ultimately achieved that is sustainable. This takes time and usually the result is a lean predator/numerous predator balance that keeps the BOW below its carrying potential.
LMB are also very specific about the size of prey they can eat. They will resort to eating prey at lengths below this range only when preferred sizes are not sufficient to maintain them. Obviously, as anthropic mentioned, different ages of LMB are affected differently. LMB in their first couple of years grow slow because BG grow relatively fast and the young LMB have a short window of time that they can consume YOY BG ... after which YOY BG compete with them directly for food resources. TJ mentioned in a different thread the concept of "turning the corner" where the predator fish reach a size to feed on the predominately sized prey. Needless to say, the interactions are complex with some LMB excelling while others are struggling all the time. Expand the fertility and fish growth can resume. Ultimately, however, how you manage the number of LMB ( and their corresponding lengths) will be the determining factor in apex predator RW, growth, and ultimate weight.
