This Beautiful fish was caught this past Sunday. Caught 9 others that were close , but this was the big one of the day.
This is a one year old F1 strain tiger bass from American sport fish.
Fish was approximately 5-6 inches when stocked. As of Sunday, 16.5 inches long. Measured quickly and put back.

Stocking ratio was : 32 coppernose to 1 bass for a total of 55 Bass. Bream were stocked May 17 2014 and then allowed to spawn.
Bass were added September 10, 2014. In other words the ratio may be more than 32:1. Also 200 pounds of crawfish were added to the lake mid april 2014.

These bass ( at least a few of them) spawned this year and I'm not sure which month. I have counted thus far 12 new bass about 5-6 inches long within the last 3 days and caught 2 on a beatle spin, so next year at this time I will have to pull some from the lake.

Looking good Jason.

Cmm

Jason,

Well done man! Looking forward to your updates in the future!

Biil D.

That bass should be in the low 2's.

Maybe so............small mouth.
16.5 body , fat.
Ok low 2's

We gonna go thru it again aint we.

Good looking fish. Maybe get some weights to go with your measurements and you can chart their progress over time.

You are on track - keep up the work effort.

As you correctly noted it is the offspring that need to be managed (harvest) and not the original stocker fish. 32 to 1 is a good starting place in my opinion. As a word of caution growth and age can be hard to verify over time. Below is an interesting pic for analysis. Hard to see but these are all 1 yr old LMB

Hard to tell from angle of photo, but appears to be well beyond 100 WR. There are WR charts on the forum and throughout the Web, get some length and weight measurements next time and you can chart your progress. Again, it sure looks like this fish is well beyond 100 - and that's impressive size for an age 2 fish.

I guess it's really not fair to say these fish are 1 year old.
When I got them September 10th, 2014 ( last year) they were already 5-6 inches long and considered intermediate fingerlings.
So the Bass were probably 6-7 months old when I got them.

I do not know what 100 WR means.

I didn't want to poke any holes in her mouth with a scale and just taking holding her out for pics probably wasn't a good idea. But I had to get a photo because I doubt anyone would have believed me without pic proof. Personally, I was in disbelief at how large these fish have gotten.
The fish in the photo was well above 2 pounds. Probably closer to three pounds. Most certainly a female.

The others that I caught with exception to the 1st years spawn, were close but not the size of this one. 4 of those went probably in the 2's. And the rest were nice. Apparently they are not all growing at the same rate, which has me a little stumped because they were all fat like the one in the pic...except for 2 males which were long looking and not as stout, but still you could tell they had been feeding well. I started to cull them out but I do not know how many males I have in there. Didn't think it would be a good idea at this early stage. Additionally, I do not believe this fish to be the largest fish in my lake. I have seen some hit out there blowing bream 2-3 feet in the air and a few hitting them at the banks and blowing 20 or so small bream out on the banks. Youd swear it was a 4-5 pound fish, But I know that's just my mind playing tricks on me. Honestly tho, I have seen some violent hits out there that just makes me believe that I haven't caught the largest bass that are in there. I have a hell of a forage base , this much I know. I was by design. When I stocked the coppernose I made sure that I saw their spawn/babies, and quite a few of them before I put the bass in.

The fathead minnows that I had schools of last year at this time , have been decimated. No fathead minnows to be found, anywhere. The frogs are all gone too. The crawfish that I had here naturally also bit the dust. You can see why I needed a high bream to bass ratio, along with supplemental crawfish.

I also enlarged the lake this year and added about an acre, maybe a little less. I discovered at that time that I have about a million freshwater clams in there. Not sure if that's a good thing but from what I have read , they filter the water nicely.
It's really beautiful now.

So anyway, that's whats been going on with my pond experiment.

Take a look here to help understand relative weight, and how it can help you determine how your fish measure up: http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=160456#Post160456

There's never a need to poke holes in a fish to weigh it. Simply suspend it in a plastic bag, like you get at Walmart. Or use the tare function on a digital platform scale, and lay the fish in a tray of some kind.

For weight on larger fish I use boga grip - for smaller fish in colander on digital food scale. They are $15 at WalMart - great tool if you want to learn relative weights of fish [WR].

RES would respond nicely to your clam forage base - you could grow some monsters likely.

I would say intermediate fish Boga, larger fish plastic bag. My concern would be damaging the fish's jaw with only one pick-up point like a boga grip has.

Settle down, Cochise.

The bass looks great for it's age. I'm guessing that bass is somewhere between 2 - 2.5 lbs. I didn't see where you pegged a proposed weight in your initial post as you you didn't weigh it. If you think it's closer to three pounds, outstanding!!

I use a Berkley scale with a large hook, and you put the hook through the gap between the jaw and the first gil. No damage, most always.

Hey J you are among kindred spirits, Pond Folks!....relax. I look forward to hearing about your progress!

I'm all good.
Thanks for everything guys.

Hi jason I was planning on buying some tiger bass to stock in my new 1 acre pond in june. Do you remember how much you paid for them? and any advice on stocking them?

Jason,
...nice LMB...keep posting your progress. I stocked some CB LMB the end of May at 2 1/4". They are now at +/- 11". I'm curious how the two strains of genetics compare. But, I agree with ewest article posting above that growth is highly contingent upon their ability to eat. They will not continue to grow without a sufficient amount of forage. Good job!
Charlie