I was reading a description on a hatchery website which mentioned their F-1 hybrids were cold-water tolerant. It got me to thinking, has anyone tried hybrids out in the northern states with any success?

We tried them in the early 90's in Cedar Bluff Res (7000 surface acre, 75' depth) in the eastern side of the western KS corridor with zero ever determined to have survived. Doesn't mean it can't happen but it didn't work here.

Imoore, F-1 hybrids are nearly as cold tolerant as northern LMB are. From my experiences in stocking the F-1's, you would be better off with pure Northerns as far north as you are. The southern part of Iowa is about as far as you can stock F-1s and potentially get a VERY slightly bigger end result.

You won't hurt anything stocking F-1's, but I don't believe you would gain anything from them either. If you stock your pond with northerns first, you could always add a few F-1's in a few years to add some genetic diversity to your LMB

Thanks for the responses guys. I am a ways off from stocking predators as we are still completing the purchase of our property and then I plan to renovate the existing puddle (currently 1/10th acre or so). In the mean time, I was debating using it as a grow out pond to raise some larger F-1s and stocking them in my dads older pond only a few miles from here. I don't know that I will try it, but was curious if anyone else had. Thanks again for the replies.

I'm with Rainman on this. Start with Northern genetics and introduce F1s later and let nature handle it from there. I know of some fisheries in NE with great LMB and they have Florida genetics involved.

There is a lot here on the subject.

The simple answer , at least as to LMB and BG , is the further you get away from the genetics that naturally work in your area the larger the chance that the results will be unacceptable. Just because a fish survives does not mean that it will reach its potential. For example there are different results as to some common traits between the 2 reciprocal F-1 crosses mNLMB X fFLMB vs fNLMB X mFLMB .

I wasn’t having much luck with the search function on the topic, if you had a specific list in mind you would recommend, I’d love to read up on it. I’m most likely not going to try it, as I’m planning an “alternate” species pond for myself, and it’s the type of thing I would want to be very hands on with if I did. Just curious if others had done any tinkering with genetics. What you’re saying makes sense about the local species being better suited for sure. Thanks all for weighing in

Look through this link about LMB in the archives for several topics about largemouth genetics and F1 bass.
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=255372#Post255372

North American Journal of Fisheries Management 28:516–522, 2008

Copyright by the American Fisheries Society 2008

Physiological and ecological differences among

FLMB, NLMB, and their hybrids have been documented.

For example, they exhibited different critical

and chronic thermal maxima (Fields et al. 1987) and

different mortality rates when held at low temperatures

(Carmichael et al. 1988). In addition, FLMB and

NLMB differ in the timing of spawning, growth rate,

reproductive success, and survival (Isely et al. 1987;

Gilliland and Whitaker 1991; Philipp and Whitt 1991).

Performance differs among endemic units within the

historic range of FLMB and NLMB. For example,

growth and survival differed between progeny of

parents from different drainages in Illinois (Philipp

and Claussen 1995). Similarly, swimming performance

differed between Illinois and Wisconsin populations of

bass (Cooke et al. 2001). Lastly, the survival, growth,

and reproductive success of the local stock were higher

than those of the nonlocal stock when comparing

performance among Wisconsin, Illinois, Texas, and

Florida populations at each locale (Philipp et al. 2002).