I'm not much on PC and don't try to mislead folks, but I try to do homework. Translating hard data into readable articles requires a bit of interpretation and interpolations, and, hopefully, doesn't produce too many mistakes.

I can always be wrong, and maybe I am this time, but I don't think I misunderstood the finding in http://publish.uwo.ca/~bneff/papers/...fe history.pdf, although I might have. What I understood was that sneakers and satellites pass their genetic traits to offspring and their offspring have as good a chance at survival as parentals offspring. Consequently (and this is my extrapolation) a diminished population of parentals (larger fish) means more bluegill with cockholder characterics (smaller size).
Similarly, http://www.pnas.org/content/101/8/2381.full suggests to me that such genetic effects happen in the wild.
A more casually presented site http://hatch.cehd.umn.edu/research/f.../bluegill.html indicates that smaller females produce smaller egg numbers.
And if both genetics and enviornment effect growth patterns http://repository.lib.ncsu.edu/publi...e+history.pdfs it would seem to me that saving larger fish to breed would produce larger future generations.
Other data was also reviewed and led me to the same general conclusion.

The expert in this field (based on studies completed) appears to be B.D.Neff, and I will endeavor to get more of his materials to further evaluate the need for survivorship of larger bluegill.

Sorry if I'm wrong.