Thanks for the response JP and ewest. I actually do not typically harvest my largest BG anyway. I let them die in the pond instead of the dinner plate.
The comment about harvesting under 6" makes sense to me this year. As does letting the bass spawn (although I now think they have). I believe that they actually changed spawning locations on me this year.
Would you guys suggest adding some 10" LMB if I continue to catch and not record LMB of that class size? I feel like I have a better bearing on what the BG population looks like right now. So I could very easily go target some LMB and get numbers and RWR.
The mode, which is a fancy way of saying the most frequently occurring length, should be 10" for restricting BG recruitment. If you aren't finding them in that length, you may not have had LMB recruitment. While you can have too many of them, could fix that pretty easily. In Oklahoma, where I am from originally, the temperature aspect of the climate is very similar to Maryland. So I think experiences there my apply. I fished many ponds that were completely unmanaged that produced BG >10". They are old, decades old, and they all have one thing in common. The most commonly caught LMB are around 10" in length and the vast majority were between 8" and 12". These ponds probably have too many LMB really and are less productive than they could be if appropriately harvested. From my own experience, harvesting bass will improve their condition but at the rate I harvested them (probably less than 15 pounds/acre) I didn't see a great improvement in length. I suspect that harvest caused an increase in BG recruitment. So as the number of LMB are reduced, creel harvest becomes much more important.
One thing I would tell you is that you don't want 130 RW LMB if you want large BG. I would try to keep the numbers of LMB up to a level that their weight adjusted average RW is 90 to 100 but where the 14" LMB are lower than the 8" LMB. So it would be acceptable to have 115 RW 8" LMB and 85 RW 14" LMB. Such a distribution of RW tells you that there are too few 2" to 3" BG to support growth of the 14" LMB and that BG recruitment is appropriately limited. Its OK and its good to harvest these larger low RW LMB. Lean bass mean that prey of the most appropriate lengths are not abundant. But this has the added benefit of increasing the energy they must expend to find food and increasing the number of the BG they must eat. In other words, you want them going after the food ... rather than the food coming to them.
