Well I think he thinks you would enjoy the catfish. They are not needed for balance. The catfish are NOT going to help you grow 8 lb bass. For that matter neither will so many RES and any Hybrid BG. Don't get me wrong, they are fun to catch and I know I and the fish farmer would enjoy them but is this what you want? Decent sized panfish and small bass? His recommendation is for that and there nothing wrong with it if that is what you want.

Usually, to get what you want, you have to sacrifice something or work harder for it. For trophy LMB, it is easier to sacrifice some things than to work harder for it. For example, you could sacrifice a large population of harvestable panfish that are too large for the LMB to eat. You could sacrifice having HBG and catfish. You could sacrifice having so many RES but enough to handle snails and add modest forage. You could sacrifice, as you are already thinking, a lot of bass. All these sacrifices make it much easier to grow large LMB with less effort. It's like stacking the cards. Stack the cards for 8 lb LMB and there is a very good chance you will grow them. Make compromises to have the things you could sacrifice and the sledding to 8lb LMB will be much harder. In the end, whether you achieve the goal of 8 lb LMB will depend on whether you worked hard enough to overcome any compromises made.

You'll just be going in with minnows and plants for now. So there is plenty of time to think about what you really want and what you don't want to sacrifice. Think about these two questions because the answers to them determine what course you should take.


It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so - Will Rogers