If you have an overpopulation of bass and you have someone wanting them for restocking, could there be a chance he's getting stunted bass with limited growth potential?
Steve, LMB only live for so long so any older fish have lost some of their potential due to the time they lost. However, I can speak from experience that stunted or slow growing bass due to excessive competition have not lost their potential to grow fast from their current state. If they are moved into an environment where there is abundant appropriately sized food, they will grow remarkably. I will give you an example from my own experience.
In my twenties, thanks to volunteering when working cattle (branding, castration, inoculation, etc.) I was afforded the privilege of hunting and fishing a >10,000 acre ranch. It was a very memorable time in my life. There happened to a pond on this ranch that had only 1 type of fish in it, GSF (I presume stock naturally in a high water event). Oddly, even without a predator, they attained lengths of 8" in that pond and the fishing was fun and fast. Problem was ... that I over-harvested the GSF and removed the biggest GSF which were cannibalizing the GSF YOY. So after a couple of seasons the pond was seriously over populated with little GSF.
So that fall, I decided to move some LMB from a pond about a 1/2 mile away. This pond was overrun with LMB and the largest I caught from it was maybe 2lbs but there were abundant LMB less than 10 inches and very large GSF, BG, and their hybrids. So brought an ice chest and moved ... I think .... between 10 to 12 LMB that ranged in the 9" to 10" sizes and moved them to the GSF pond. Can't recall exactly but I think this would have been late September. The pond I moved them too was probably around 1/3 acre. I was just trying to add some predation and hopefully see larger GSF later down the road as the LMB recruited.
I didn't return to the pond until the next spring and did so just to check up on the LMB and see if the transplant was successful. This would have been in the late March to mid April time frame. I was blown away with the difference. The GSF ... where before they roamed where they pleased ... were hanging near cover and there were far fewer I could see. But the LMB, they had grown from ~9.5 inches to 14" over same period. To gain a sense of the growth it is from around 5 oz to over a pound. They had tripled in weight. To be sure, they were never going to make it 8 lbs because they probably ranged between 4 and 8 years of age at the time of stocking. But they demonstrated that an old fish can be transplanted and respond well to the move if the conditions in the new environment are favorable. These LMB knew how to capture and consume prey ... they were only held back by the supply of prey.
It would depend on goals, but LMB can be transplanted even at advanced age and mark good growth. Many hatcheries produce artificially fed LMB of similar lengths. But these fish are truly handicapped where as Fyfer's are not even if they may be a bit smaller or older.
