i bet it will fish better with water temps in the mid 60's and 70's

Internet... Social media... and what Fouz said.

Presure from tournaments and fish kill from them - if you go to a private stocked lake you will NEVER have a month of bad fishing - you will on tournament lakes and if you use TPWL stats you will note the demise in size- private lake don't have demise in size but just the reverse- As Todd Driscoll from TPWL Bio wrote 1/4 to 1/3 of all tournament weighted fish die within 3 days - how long doed it take for a bass to get to 5 lbs - TPWl stats don't lie neither do private lakes that have no tournaments but some folks will for self gratification and to gamble- guess who pays for it , not them they reap but don't plant

Easy... I go with the science and the data as you state. I am 70 and am not refering to 3 or 4 years experience on these Texas waters. I have fished hard here since 1974 and seen the fishing pressure excalate and the "catching" go up and down. The fishing has always been good. If we want the "catching" to be good, we need to pay attention to the science.....

If it was still alive, I would have bought it and turned it loose.

AgSellers04 has a good handle on the situation. I can add this from 30 years of experience and breeding bass for fishing.

Genetics plays a strong roll in the declaine of a bass fishery. Start by introducing Florida genes. Good, thjat makes for bigger bass...but...Florida bass are more difficult to catch by hook and line than are Northern types. Then waht do we (fishermen) do to make things worse?

We catch and many remove and eat the fish. Its not the harvest or the decline in the population sometimes that makes fishing more difficult, it is the changing genetic composition of the fish in the lake in response to intense fishing pressure.

TP&WD research at Heart of the Hills research station shows that "catchability" is an inherited trait. They showed they could selectively breed for "less easily caught" bass.

I've shown since that the reverse is also true, you can indeed breed a "more catchable" bass.

Look at the situation in public lakes. Lots of folks fishing, many catch and keep, fine with me if its legal. But...the "easily caught" bass are wuickly removed from the population, leaving only those difficult to catch to reproduce. After several generations of this negative selection pressure you can find a fishery with plenty of fish, but hard to catch.

In my lakes that I have for a fishing club, and those I manage, I have worked to breed and stock with bass that have been "bred to be caught." No point in a lake full of 16 pounders you cannot catch.

Dunlap isnt an "easy" fishery and will weed out the meat hunters especially this time of year.

Throw 15 feet of water on ANY lake that fast and it jacks up Water chemistry. The fish got used to being in one place now they are another. Look at what happened to stad when it filled up a few years back. It got TOUGH compared to what it was. Also Ivie has been tough in winter since I moved out there. Its gonna be a sick spawn out there this year though with the new water

Plus #1.

Tons of the superb structure is out of the water. To me that's the main thing that the is making the fishing totally different. The other thing everyone talks about have some effect . No way you can hurt the fishing that bad when most to the anglers are catching and releasing.