Southern or Fla LMB, on the other hand, can dine on multiple spawns of BG, plus with their larger mouth size can eat BG beyond what N LMB can.
Result: Northern LMB typically need to hustle more for food. A lot more. Aggression is rewarded, hesitation punished. Southern LMB don't need to be as aggressive & take risks to feed, so they don't.
Frank, how the heck are ya?
I think you may be on to something. Still there are a lot of factors. For example, Prather found that an F0 generation of Northern LMB had a great deal of variability of food conversion. The FCRs ranged from <3 to >10. That's a huge variation of food utilization and efficiency. He found that after several generations of selection he could reduce the variation and lessen the mean FCR. This stalled at an FCR between 3 and 4. They were fingerling LMB and so adults are unable to convert that efficiently.
I do, however, have to wonder what the potential of the Northern LMB truly is when a similar quantity of feed is available to them. There was an article in PB where they were growing Northern LMB females under a forage stocking strategy. These fish were growing at the rate of ~3 lbs annually and closing in on 10 lbs after three years. Pretty remarkable. It definitely stretched my understanding of the Northern LMB's potential for growth.
I've said this before. We overthink the genetics when we are talking growth (though probably not for ultimate potential weight). Most of the time, great genetics underperform their potential because the food chain won't support it. Any bass may be as good as another in most ponds because of limitations of the food chain.
