Thanks FishinRod I really appreciate the reply.
I don't want to push the limit, but the BG reproduce more than I ever could imagine.You would think that 20 " HSB in a 1/4 acre pond could have some control on them. I have fished the local lakes for 40+ years for HSB I know what aggressive feeders they are! Even tho they have small mouths they should be eating the hundreds of 2-3" and below CNBG. I hate to start over because some CNBG are reaching 1 1/2 #, but if I do start over I will have to come up with a different combo!
When my dad was alive and getting around well we used to go fishing for HSB. His routine was to go out and catch BG at the municipal lake and then go to the reservoir. We'd have 8 poles hanging off the boat LOL! When one would strike the tip of the rod would be in the water. Multiples were commonly hooked as a school moved through. But the meat of this story is that the bait was often larger than 6" in length while the HSB were only 16" to 18" most of the time. I remember thinking there was no way to get that 6" BG into the HSBs mouth ... and so I wondered why they struck the bait at all. We hooked BG just behind the head and the head is evidently where the HSB attacked. A struggling fish is attractive to a predator I guess. I've also had LMB chase and attack bluegill I was playing that were obviously too large to swallow. Your experience with the HSB/BG combination is similar to others BTW.
I am reminded of post ewest wrote concerning pellet size preference. Researchers found than fish are given multiple sizes of pellets that the fish tended to go after specific sizes more frequently. So after half of the samples were eaten ... the proportion of pellets consumed would be most frequently a particular size. If I recall correctly, the peak of frequency occurred at a specific relationship to gape size. This proportional relationship held for LMB of different sizes. When it comes to live prey, probably a similar relationship exists. I think few predators would control BG as well as LMB (eg FH catfish) but gape size is large for any predator that can.
