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Probably. Smallmouth have a high tendancy to overpopulate, but I believe with aurora and chatfield there are plenty of predators to eat the young.
Two lakes that are waaay past their peak over here but still have some big bass that need protected are harvey and rifle gap. Harvey had a 6? something lb. smallmouth caught this spring and rifle gap used to have some real nice ones, I caught a 3.5 pounder a long time ago there. Harvey used to also have good populations of BIG largemouth too. No longer are the populations high in these lakes as the limits imposed were too high and poor and didn't protect the important fish, and these lakes cannot have warmwater species stocked in them thanks to ESA. Limits for both species of bass (not sure how many largemouth are in rifle) need to be 0 for these lakes for a long time to get them back.
Two lakes that are waaay past their peak over here but still have some big bass that need protected are harvey and rifle gap. Harvey had a 6? something lb. smallmouth caught this spring and rifle gap used to have some real nice ones, I caught a 3.5 pounder a long time ago there. Harvey used to also have good populations of BIG largemouth too. No longer are the populations high in these lakes as the limits imposed were too high and poor and didn't protect the important fish, and these lakes cannot have warmwater species stocked in them thanks to ESA. Limits for both species of bass (not sure how many largemouth are in rifle) need to be 0 for these lakes for a long time to get them back.