Bill, 4CP, Snipe ... thank you for the comments.
Snipe, I do think it is important understand how things don't always work out as planned. That said, I do think that a technology like this is a practical solution to an age old problem. The need for a highly skewed to female of the ratio sexes in a trophy pond. Greatly skewing the ratio of sexes at the fry production phase concentrates value and reduces wasted or unwanted male fish. It doesn't eliminate the need for manual sexing if there is no tolerance for uncontrolled recruitment (like in Colorado where they couldn't tolerate any in fisheries where they wanted the WAE to be put and take only).
Even so, I think for many cases an occasional pheno-typical male is acceptable even while completely ignoring or caring about it. It really depends on the frequency with such aberrations occur. For example, if it occurs once in every 200 fry (probably a much higher frequency than what would occur) there is a 1/2 percent chance that any individual would be functionally male. Consider a case in a 3 acre pond where one stocks 25 fry per acre. Chances favor that none of the stocking is male. But even if one is, it wouldn't be the end of world. Recruitment, if any, would still be greatly diminished because of the skewed sex ratio. Growth should be better than stocking 50/acre of mixed sex fry. Considering that one would still cull some of original stocking, the phenotypic male stands a good chance of being selected for cull. The odds favor that it may be very difficult to recruit LMB when the sex ratio is skew to that degree initially. In a GA lake, mistakes at sexing occurred with the initial stocking but the sex ratio was still skew female after 7 years where the fishing remained excellent for trophy LMB (1/10 the fishing effort to catch a >4.5 lb LMB as compared to professional tournament fishermen on the best GA trophy reservoirs). The authors credited this to abundant prey inhibiting recruitment success. I guess what I am saying is that even when male(s) are present in an initial stocking the benefit of the initially skewed sex ratio is evident well into the future.
I see two uses for this technology. The production of 2 in fry where one just takes what he gets understanding that a phenotypic male could be present and the production of forage fed ~12 in genotypic females (for laddering) that are either manually sexed or not depending on whether the consumer can tolerate an occasional phenotypic male. Manual sexed fish, particularly the shooters, are higher value and perhaps these fish should be auctioned?
I would love to see KEO Fish Farm take this on as a supplier of fry particularly. They already produce a fair proportion of the national production of HSB and GC fry. They have lots of expertise there and presently maintain a line of LMB.
