Look, Being proactive and supporting our DFG must happen. If we do not pay attention as a collective group to things that happen in courtrooms, we will pay the price with the continued infringment upon our sport. That's all. Your points are well taken. My counterpoints are this: Small ponds with 10 pounders? Ok, put a bass in a tank and feed it daily with some other source of food where it has to expend no energy, and yes it will get big. How big? really big. Look at castaic lagoon, tons of trout, small and confined area, and short fat bombs living there. Casitas used to got double trout plants, for a while there we started to see the return of the bomb. A lot of fish in the 14 pound range. Trout plants stop, and now we get the same length fish, but skinny as hell. You feel sorry for the fish. There is a ton of 8-10 pound fish there, but the big ones just can't compete with the athletic fish. Can a fish get to be in the 18-20 pound range by eating crawdads? maybe. But the better bet is feed it a ton of protein rich BIG farm fish that swim nice and slow and have no fins. Look at castaic, once know as the lake that would produce the next record. Then the introduction of the stripers, and now good luck. Striper fishing is awesome though. When the trout plants start coming and those big fish key in on them, fun times! Clear lake is stuffed with a ton of other food sources that allow the bass to get big. The lakes that recieve trout plants? They will suffer. What else is there? Your points about mike long and mike gash. Good for them, I respect what they have done. They are innovators and deserve the credit. You use a 12inch swimbait? that's a bomb! how heavy is that thing? Is it hard to cast? I think that would be awesome to use something that big. Seems like it would scare the fish. That's it. Good luck there in Japan and good job spreading the word.