Hey trouter: I can't agree with your post as to needing to keep any lake as a bait
lake just for the kids. Besides Kress, Horsethief,and Rowland get almost no kids walking
or riding bikes to them. Even for the others your concern could be addressed by a kids
only section where bait is allowable. On most this would work and still allow a quality fishery.
Besides that parents who fish should be teaching the older kids a fishing method which lends
itself to conservation and that's not bait.

Also I fished the 4 lakes,actually 6-7 lakes W. of Coldwater for years and can't remember any fish
over about 15-16" and those were rare.. Perhaps some of these lakes could produce a quality fisheries with reduced stocking. I'd like to see it done if it's possible. But they didn't impress me as particularly rich lakes.

As to Castle lake you are better informed than me currently about that one... I heard that it was fishing down from the days several years back when I fished it without much detail. I assumed (wrongly probably) that it was from lack of spawning. They may have meant fishing down in size
if your expericnce is lots of 16" fish the opposite is likely true. Those "new" lakes go through
a progression of relatively abundant food which is gradually depleted by the population of large fish
so the size declines over the years.