Greg, I've heard Bob Lusk say the same thing. If LMB don't get enough to eat, they stop growing. If they get enough to eat to grow to, say, 12 inches, and then don't get an adequate diet, they become a skinny 12 incher. But in order to grow to 12 inches in the first place, they must have had an adequate diet and pretty normal weight for that length at one time.
My BOW had the opposite going on for a long time: Good forage once the LMB hit about 10-12 inches, poor forage when LMB were smaller. Result was a few fat healthy 10 - 14 inchers, plus loads of stunted fish in 6 to 9 inch range.
Finally got out of the box by stocking larger aggressive N LMB to eat the stunted LMB, plus limed & fertilized to grow more small forage fish.
This reminds me of a discussion Nedoc and I were having when I visited his place. He was telling me about some of the conversations he and Bruce Condello had about fish growth. Their idea is that if fish lack proper nutrients and thus growth in early stages of life, they can never "make up" that lost growth. At least that is the way I understood what he was saying. Maybe if he reads this he can clarify if I got it wrong. In other words to produce a trophy fish that fish needs to start growing fast and never be deprived of nutrients at any stage in its growth. If tiny 1" or 2" or 3" fish grow slowly that might not keep them from attaining "good fish" size but likely never a trophy. So their emphasis was making sure fish had adequate nutrition through all stages.
I have been mixing in a small amount of Optimal Starter #4 in with my Aquamax MVP when feeding my main pond. As I hand toss it out around the perimeter of the pond the 2-3" BG just gobble it up (the tiny feed being lighter tends to stay near shore where the small fish are as the larger pellets get further out where the big fish are). That tells me those small YOY fish are hungry and need the additional feed to reach later good potential size. At least for the ones that survive to adulthood. And the ones that get eaten as forage the LMB benefit from the additional growth of the BG.
