Harvest is necessary for sure if you want to grow some nice fish. But how many to harvest is based on RW/WR isn't it? And what about too many fish in a pond where the too many are the forage fish, Tp, TFS, Bg, RES that feed my lmb/hsb? Still not sure how one determines how many pounds of fish per acre is too many? Or how many pounds do I actually have in the pond? Mother Nature knows the answer because when there is too many she will drop by and kill them off, not all of them but most of them. I wished I knew the answer when it comes to how many pounds of fish are in my pond so Mother Nature does not drop by.
Tracy, it's going on 4 years as I remember. If your BOW isn't at its capacity then you have been harvesting some of its production.
IMHO, the goal shouldn't be to achieve or maintain carrying capacity. Rather, I think it is much better to have a goal as to what the standing weight won't exceed. Consider what you not willing to risk the standing weight exceeding. A good rule of thumb is that this weight will be 1/4 predators and 3/4 prey. So if you know the standing weight you will risk to mother nature, then you can calculate the number of adult bass the bow can sustain. If the RWs are very high, this may be a sign of an overabundance of prey and a BOW nearer the carrying capacity. I don't know but I wonder whether it might be better for long lived fish to have LMB at 110 RW than at 130 RW?
IMHO, the carrying capacity isn't probably the greatest risk to your fishery. The greatest risk would be that the predators will out grow your BOW's production of prey. When a BOW is in this condition, it wouldn't be at carrying capacity because the predator overweight prevents it.
**BUMP**
I know this didn't answer your question. It isn't easy to answer which is why no one has. But typically there is a limiting standing weight for the forage fish. This limiting standing weight would reflect the fertility of the water. A good distribution of secondary trophic organisms (insects, minnows, shrimp, cladocerans, etc makes a bonafide difference also). Its complex but there is limit to the standing weight and to the annual production. When you introduce the predators, the standing weight will fall but there will be more annual production of prey fish. So there is difference between production and standing weight. When the predators crop the prey ... this benefits remaining prey fish. It reduces predation of secondary organisms allowing them to recover numerically. So you might observe this cycle as a greening and clearing of your water as consumption at the primary level goes through a cycle caused by cycles in the abundance of secondary trophic organisms. These cycles indicate effects of the predators cascading through the trophic pyramid.
These cycles are natural as every creature in the pond would like to just take it over. Relationships with their predators is what prevents them from doing just that. When everything is working in high production mode the predators are cropping what is being produced preventing the carrying capacity from being reached. This cropping enhances reproduction of prey fish and so cropping enhances production overall.
The problem is understanding the standing weight of LMB. For the first couple of years after a BOW is stocked with known number of LMB an educated guess can be made about the production of prey. This can be made from using well documented weight conversion ratios and observations of the LMB actual growth. It can serve as baseline for annual production potential but this number will be less than potential standing weight. Production is however, probably a much better yardstick to manage by than standing weight or carrying capacity.
