Hello everyone
Long time reader first time posting. I’ll start off with saying I love this forum. There is a VAST amount of knowledge here. My pond was built in 1977 by my Grandpa. It has roughly 7 springs running into the pond and water continuously flows out. I have an automatic feeder set to feed twice a day with AquaMax 500 or 600. The pond is also fertilized and aerated. It is stocked with LMB, BG, CNBG, CC, and BC. (One of my great uncles put the BC in about 15 years ago before I managed the pond.) So far they haven’t been a problem but fear that day will come. Never really catch many BC but the ones you catch are around 12 inches and fat. The pond has been bass heavy for many years now and I decided to take about 150 out last spring. The bass size has increased as I knew they would but now I have started catching smaller BC. Since the BC are already there and I can’t undo that, I would like to try and manage them the best I can. I love to eat and catch them. The pond gets fished fairly regular, it just seems that fishing is poor most times and at times I have no problem catching a mess of fish. I know that my BG numbers are extremely low and there isn’t much forage fish for the food chain. I have been reading up on Tilapia and plan on trying to buy about 20 or 30 pounds total this spring. My hopes are this will replenish the food chain and relieve some pressure off the BG and hopefully get their numbers back up as well. I also plan on stocking a few adult BG over the course of this year and might even do that over the next few years depending on their numbers. I also plan on fishing very heavy for the BC and have ALWAYS kept every single one. Anyways I said all this to ask if anyone has ever tried raising tilapia over the winter in tanks then releasing into pond in the spring. I just wonder if it’s cost effective by the time you heat the water all winter and the maintenance and all that goes with it. If anyone has done this I’d love to hear the cons and pros on this and any pointers you have like your setup of tanks how big they are and how many fish they hold. Thanks