I'm sure this comparison will offend some people, so sorry in advance, but:
Don't YP play a similar role in a SMB pond as GSF do in a LMB pond?
Both are a smaller predator with a medium gape that can reproduce quickly, so in large numbers, they would put a lot of pressure on the forage base and YOY. They sit in the middle of the food chain, so the apex predator will eat them, but wouldn't it have resulted in a higher carrying capacity (higher numbers, not necessarily higher top-end sizes) to cut out the GSF or YP and allow the forage base (something like GSH or LCS that grows to a respectable size, actually a similar size as your intermediate predator) to recruit better to larger adult size, and let the apex predator prey directly on the forage base, so you don't lose all that biomass potential by adding another trophic level in the middle?
I have limited experience with all this, so feel free to contradict anything I've said. That's why I'm throwing these wild thoughts out there. I want to see if I'm nuts, or may be onto something.
I don't think many of you have to worry about this as much given that you aerate and feed, so basically you've pushed your total biomass/carrying capacity out to a much higher limit and have some room to play with for adding some bonus predators, but I don't believe we'll be aerating or feeding at my pond, so I think I have to be more careful/selective than the typical pondmeister who aerates and feeds.
