For those who want to follow the whole story a link to part II is here

I’m beginning to wonder if I might need to do a BG cull…

The 150 BG I stocked last April have taken over the pond and I can easily catch 8-9” BG that weight up to 9oz. The young BG are also along all the shore lines. They are clearly very happy in the pond.

I have a Texas Hunter feeder and was feeding them 1s once a day last year and the fish ate but it was not very enthusiastic. That has changed. They are now piranhas with the big ones competing with all the smaller size classes. I stayed at the 1s once per day, but today added a second feeding of 1s.

The LMB remain small (avg=9in) and generally below the 100% RW. Given the huge number of BG in the pond it’s a bit puzzling to me. The last two I caught were both 7.5 inches and skinny. Fishing is not the most scientific sampling, but I should have started to see some that are bigger than the 9 inch average that I saw all last year- especially since I’ve removed ~150 LMB in the past year (including the aforementioned pair of 7.5 inch fish).

Should I start taking any action on the BG or just let it play out for another year or so?