Hello!

I have read through the forums and have seen some posts of second hand experience with stocking rates as high as 100lbs of tilapia per acre. Does anyone have any first hand experience with really high stocking rates of tilapia in their pond with an existing LMB and BG population?

Here is the back story to my situation. My wife and I purchased 60 acres with a 8 year old pond that had (as an afterthought) been stocked with LMB, BG and 50-75 Channel Cats. This was the end of July 2011 and I only fished it once or twice that year. I did keep fish records and was pretty sure that I most likely had an overpopulated LMB issue. I had a decent size range of largemouth bass taken from <6 inches to 2 or 3 around 3 lbs. The largest bass (around 3 lbs) were very plump and the smaller bass were thin. Also all bluegill caught were in excess of 5 inches most being around the 7-9 inch range and these things were broad shouldered beasts! The following spring I stocked 15lbs of tilapia at Easter and 15lbs about 3 weeks later. Through out the year (2012) I kept fishing records and they more or less stayed the course lots of thin smaller LMB with a few football shaped fish up to 5.5 lbs caught. Tons of slab Bluegill with very few intermediate to small blue gill caught. I did visually begin to see smaller bluegill though.

This Easter though I noticed a tremendous difference in the condition of the fish caught. All LMB from 5 inches to about 2.5 pounds were all shaped like footballs and a wide variety of bluegill from tiny to 9 inches. So I added 55lbs of tilapia 4-1-2013 and intend on adding about 75lbs in about 4 weeks.

This will put me at about 18lbs per acre.

If Uncle Sam is good to me and my taxes don't go up too much over last year I might consider upping that to around 36lbs per acre. However I wanted to run it by everyone here and see what y'all thought because the last thing I want to do is lose the positive gains I have seen so far by overdoing it.

Thanks!

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