Common when there's overpopulation of bass, the ratio of bass to bait is too high.
Very common in private ponds where too few juvenile (1 - 2 lbs) fish are taken, where there's too much catch and release of those small to mid size fish. Or there may not be enough safe spawing ground, or too little cover, for the young bait fish; they can't build any size, they all get eaten as fry or fingerlings - and then there's famine.
In pressured lakes/ponds, you may get the opposite, an imbalance, lots of bait and too few, but big/wily/cautious predators whose overmatched fry is eaten by hordes of adult blue gill and crappie.