Eric,
I find myself in complete agreement with your comments above. After re-reading these posts I realize I don't understand the depth the kill Tracy experienced at his pond. I read only enough of his original thread to understand that HSB died and after offering encouragement I didn't return to it. To be sure, I think as long as a person understands what's at stake he can push the envelope implementing things like feeding, aeration, and algaecides to mitigate risks. I do know that Tracy voiced concerns about his BOW in an earlier thread saying he had a good thing going and didn't want to push it over the edge. I made similar comments in that thread but we couldn't agree that a plan limiting numbers of fish could be implemented successfully due to unforeseen natural mortality.
You make an excellent point, as did Tracy, that it is difficult to understand natural mortality and this is recurring object of discussion when we talk about harvest and in particular risks of over-harvest. I think the best we can do when opting to limit weights is to work with a plan where the goal is to limit the number of adult fish through a process of selecting (or potentially stocking) a specific number of them annually while fishing or surveying the water. Its a different mindset to work to limit the numbers/weight and a person will have fewer than wanted/planned due to mortality that was unplanned. So its not perfect, but when selecting rigorously and following growth it is possible to make reasonable estimates of standing weights of this group on the trophy path and what their forage requirements are.
