Sometimes it hard to even get a 10" bass ! Throw in some 12.5"-14"ers and it can become tough to get a limit.
This may be a big part of your question. Does it seem like there is an abundance of those 12' to 14" bass? If so, then its likely an issue of high competition for the same size food. Once they get over 16" or so there is typically more food for them as they can eat bigger prey. If your not seeing an over abundance of those 10" bass, you probably don't have an issue with stockpiling. Give it some time with those goldies. A 6 pound bass in New England is likely 12 or 13 years old. Do you have too many panfish? They can make it tough for bass to reach 12" adulthood quickly.
There are tons of small bass less than 10". Sometimes when bringing the lure to the boat you can see a school following.The 12"-16"ers are fairly rare in our tournaments. Out of 12-17 fisherman, average of less than 10 are caught, and usually only 1 bigger bass over 3 lbs caught. This last tournament, my 13" bass won the big fish contest. There are definitely pan fish, and tons of crappie, that are fighting for forage,as well. These last couple years I think the numbers on crappie have gone down, at least when we fished it's harder to catch them in numbers. Paul D, or LargeFry might chime in ? Pickerel , I'd say a less than average amount. Maybe in our "end of the year" letter, I'll add a poll to see what the members are catching for bass. What we're doing now is all a scheme for our future to start stocking walleye ! Unfortunately we can't get an Electroshocking boat in there due to no motors allowed at all.
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