Frank I make my decisions based on what is happening in the pond population. I monitor that by RW/age , seine surveys , creel surveys , visual surveys and on occasion shock surveys. Water quality is monitored and adjusted. We do not manage for trophy LMB even though a few are there.

I started to describe why I thought most small pond owners will not be satisfied with a trophy LMB pond. Very few fishermen want to spend hours trying to get one bite from a big bass with not much else.

If you really want a trophy LMB pond then manage for 1-2 large (10lb.) LMB per acre with most of the forage in the 5-10 inch range. Start with only a few LMB stockers (25 per acre) and a lot of forage. Take out no BG for 3 years and take out most of the LMB you catch after 1 year and all male LMB caught. You want as little LMB recruitment as possible while you grow the bulk of the forage to 5-10 in. At that point manage for little recruitment of either BG or LMB. You want very few LMB , a bunch of 5-10in forage and only a few small BG or LMB. Just manage the balance formula for those results. It may require trapping/seining of small BG and LMB and even partial rotenone of shallows after the spawn to get rid of small LMB and BG yoy. Feed pellets to the BG and LMB for the first 3 years and then continue feeding using only large pellets.

To answer your question I would take out no BG for 3 years and then every BG I could under 3 inches. I would use a separate forage pond to grow out BG and or other forage to 5 inches to add to the pond. Plus what I described above.

My comment to Greg was about not using recommendations for a balanced pond to meet different goals (trophy LMB or BG or for an unbalanced pond). It was not an endorsement of no BG culling as he did not say that.