Rich -
to plant any fish in the lake legally requires a permit from the State - inlcuding the trout.

The bass in most of our lakes came to be much the same way as in your lake - that is some one for whatever reason thought it was a good idea. Fishing the bass down isn't likley to help the cutthroat. It is virtually impossible to eliminate bass from a water by fishing them. They have such a high number of eggs even one pair will seed the lake. Actually the best thing for the trout survival is to try to manipulate the bass population so that you as many large bass as possible. Take the small ones for dinner and leave the larger ones in the lake for its health. A side result is a more quality bass fishery. This is the idea behind the slot limits on bass.

The bass impacts on the trout is more from food competition than predation so have mostly large bass in the lake while would increase the predation the reduction in food competition usually more than off set the lost from predation. The small bass and the trout eat much the same things will the large bass usually eat critters larger than would is normally eaten by trout.

Tight lines
S malma