I am looking for a supplier of female bass for a pond in Ky. Currently it has 2000 BG, 500 Red Ear, 40lbs of Fat heads in a little over 2 acre pond. All the posts I see have them available in the mid-west states. Anyone know of someone who will deliver/ship 150 female bass?

Try to figure out which hatcheries are actually hatching/growing LMB and not just reselling from other places. I know Jones has a presence in KY, but in my conversations with them in Cincinnati, they seemed disinterested in anything like that. They might be able to help you out. I met with a YP grower 2 hours from me in mid-March before the perch spawned and he let me pick out plump, presumably females. I then tried to express milt out as back up identifier. Hopefully we hit the nail on the head.

I have a friend that will be moving to and building a pond in TN when he retires. He has been talking to be about Trophy Pond out of TN. It looks like they service all of KY, I'd maybe start there.
https://www.trophypond.com/kentucky-fish-pond-lake-stocking-management

Cody Note - IMO - Trophy Pond Mgmt will try and convince you that to grow trophy bass all female bass are not needed nor necessary. IMO that is due to them not using nor selling all female bass.

Check with David Beasley as Solitude Lake Management - They have branch offices in eastern US. David specializes in using all female bass for growing the big trophy bass for ponds. He has written several articles in PBoss magazine about growing and managing all female bass. Managing all female bass is as much art as it is science. Genetics and water quality are very important for accomplishing big bass to keep them growing long term and not having them "hit the wall" becoming food and growth limited.

All female bass will be rather expensive for buying them and then feeding them to grow into trophies.

1. they are rare, a high premium and not cheap fish because they need to be larger size for gender determination. It takes time to grow them to large sizes. Same as buying larger trees - time is money. Separating out the females wastes the male biomass. Who wants to buy slow growing all male medium bass?. where is the market for them?

2. In the long run using all female bass probably saves money to grow trophies because all female gender fish not only provide the big fastest growing fish but it in the long run it reduces cost of managing and dealing with excess slow growing smaller bass and dealing with feeding male bass that are consuming your valuable forage fish and you not having to focus as much time and money on adding more proper forage fish / items to produce the best fish (bass). With all females and not males our Forage fish will last longer because not as many fish predators are present.

Remember as bass grow they eat bigger foods. A very important point for growing trophy fish. Be prepared to enhance the pond's forage base as the bass get bigger. IMO do not over stock initial bass numbers and 150 females in 2+ ac will quickly over eat the forage food base -see later. When that happens you get slowed growth of the females and the longer it takes to reach big bass trophy status. Maximum number to stock the experts suggest would be 50 female bass / ac . This last year with enlightening new fishery experiences and IMO - now that 50/ac is 25/ac too many for producing the best and biggest bass a pond can grow. You can't grow enough forage fish in a 2 ac pond to feed 60-80 big bass /ac as all female bass and have them grow around one lb to 2 lbs /year. I would put in no more than 20 per ac if you want the biggest bass possible for the genetics that you are buying.

The fewer that are stocked the faster they will grow and in the end reach larger sizes and do it in the quickest time. Remember for EACH pound the bass weighs it needs to eat 6 lb of forage fish to keep a maintenance weight (std wt) so it can keep growing. Then to gain 1 lb or 1lb+ PER YEAR it needs an additional 10 lbs of fish. When the LMB hits 6 lbs it needs 36lbs (for maintenance wt) + 10 lbs (46lbs) to get get to just that 7 lb mark. Be prepared to feed those fat females to keep them so they are gaining 1+ lb per year. Sit down and figure out how many forage BG (5"-7") it will take to feed 150 bass each one eating enough fish for bass weights of 5 lb, then 6 lb, then 7 lb then 8 lb. Just 40 total bass (20/ac) at each 8 lbs will be eating 2320 lbs of fish per year. ( example - 8lb X 6lb forage = 48lb + 10lbs added forage to reach 9 lbs. 58lb x 40 bass = 2320lbs. Your 2 ac pond cannot grow that much forage fish and have left over forage brood stock for reproduction next year.

Adding too many females will cost more in the long run to produce trophies because you will need to be adding large forage food items to keep them growing. Large live forage items are EXPENSIVE. BG at 4"-6" cost $2-$3 each as optimal forage for 20"+ bass.. .I would consider adding YP to the female bass pond. A 10"-12" YP makes very good slender easy to swallow food for a 7 - 8 lb bass so they each year have enough food to grow toward 10-12 lbs. Remember with just all female bass there will be no small 6"-12" bass available for the big LM females to eat for dinner. Big bass need big foods to stay at maintenance weight and then some added foods for CONTINUED growth unless you want the females to stay at one size. Food limiting conditions will do that. Bass not growing 1 lb per year means food limiting conditions.

Tell Dave that your were referred to him by Pond Boss Forum.

Recent experience with Jones leads me to think they are more interested in reselling fish they can bring in from other suppliers. I was disappointed this Spring when they stated that they are (probably) no longer going to handle SMB.

Theo - check with Fenders FF in Baltic -Charm area of OH. They have the spawning method worked out and usually manage to produce a few hunderd to a few thousand SMB fingerlings each year. Big shortage of SMB fingerlings fall of 2022. Those produced usually all sell out in Fall. You will have to take a drive to Amish country get them. It is best to place an order early so they can call you when they are available for pick-up in Sept-Oct. .

Cody Note - Yes Smallmouth bass of any size are definitely a premium fish. It is difficult and tricky to get them to dependably spawn and raise any eggs that hatch to fingerling sizes. Fingerlings are almost always sold out each Fall. Then to find juvenile to yearlings is very difficult. Anyone that can produce them should be making some money if they sell them for the SMB true value considering low numbers available each year. This is probably why Jones FF - Cincinnati will not "handle" SMB. IMO this will make SMB even more valuable due to supply and demand.

Theo - Female LMB are even more difficult to find compared to smallmouth bass for stocking ponds. See my added notes in your post above. If you can get all female LMB (12"-14") delivered for less than $50 each I think that is a pretty good deal. Growing trophy fish is not a cheap endeavor nor is it easy. That are just two reasons trophy class fish are a high premium value. A lot of time and money and or forage food value goes into growing that trophy size fish of any species.

Bill:

I bought LMB and YP fingerlings from Fender's last Fall at one of the "Fish Days" They hold at our local Seed'n'Feed Mill - these fingerlings all looked good.

My wife and I enjoy just about any excuse to go up to Berlin/Millersburg. They are just a stone's throw from Charm (which is the home to Keim Lumber - the Disneyland of lumberyards).

From a different angle, let’s look realistically into what it will take to grow 150 all female LMB as 12”-13” stocker females in a 2 ac pond. Feeding them less, ALWAYS lessens their growth rate. A fast growing bass needs to almost daily fill its belly and not just eat a few small fish if you want best possible growth of the bass / predator.

150 1 lb LMB growing to 2 lbs X 6 lb for a maintenance StdWt = 900 lbs forage + 10 lb x150 = 1500lb = 2400lbs total annual forage

150 2 lb to 3 lb X 6lb =1800 lbs + 1500 lbs = 3300lbs annual forage.
150 3 lb to 4 lb X 6lb = 2700 lbs +1500 lbs = 4200lbs annual forage
150 4 lb to 5 lb X 6 lb = 3600 lbs + 1500lbs = 5100lbs annual forage
150 5 lb to 6 lb X 6 lb = 4500 lbs + 1500 lbs = 6000lbs annual forage
150 6 lb to 7 lb X 6 lb = 5400 lbs + 1500 lbs = 6900lbs annual forage
150 7 lb to 8 lb X 6 lb = 6300 lbs + 1500 lbs = 7800lbs annual forage
150 8 lb to 9 lb X 6 lb = 7200 lbs + 1500 lbs = 8700lbs annual forage

Do you see why feeding 150 bass in a 2 acre pond is not a very good plan to grow those 150 female bass into becoming big bass in a 2 ac pond. A regular 2 ac nutrient enriched pond can probably produce 400 – 600 lbs of consumable forage fish per year. Remember there has to be enough uneaten forage fish as brood stock and some forage items for the next growing season.

If someone has to buy medium size forage fish to feed large bass to keep them growing at their best rate this gets pretty expensive. For large bass having to eat minnow size fish the bass expends almost as much energy catching lots of small fish as the nutrition benefit from eating lots of fish that are too small. Learn about optimal foraging theory for the best way to grow bass.

Bill is such a wealth of knowledge and can really put things into perspective to help achieve your goals!

To take his math a little further and to help you better determine the stocking rate base on you goal end size, here are some formulas:

X * current weight * 6 lbs + X * 10 lbs = forage pounds needed to consume for all to grow 1 lb, X is the number of current bass

Say you want 9 pound top out weight and you estimate you have 600 lbs of consumable forage, it would be:
X * 8lbs * 6 lbs + X * 10 lbs = 600lbs --> which can be reduced to X * 58lbs = 600lbs --> to solve: 600/58 = X = 10.3 bass.
Once these 10 bass are 8 pounds, they will require the full 600 lbs of consumable forage to hit the 9 lb mark. Original overstocking with the intent to cull as they grow is an option, but a very expensive option if these are going to be $50+ per fish

If you want to be conservative and say you will have 400 lbs of consumable forage yearly:

4 lb top out = 400 lbs / 28 lbs consumed = 14.2 bass
5 lb top out = 400 lbs / 34 lbs consumed = 11.7 bass
6 lb top out = 400 lbs / 40 lbs consumed = 10 bass
7 lb top out = 400 lbs / 46 lbs consumed = 8.7 bass
8 lb top out = 400 lbs / 52 lbs consumed = 7.7 bass
9 lb top out = 400 lbs / 58 lbs consumed = 6.9 bass

If you want to be more aggressive and say you will have 600 lbs of consumable forage yearly:

4 lb top out = 600 lbs / 28 lbs consumed = 21.4 bass
5 lb top out = 600 lbs / 34 lbs consumed = 17.6 bass
6 lb top out = 600 lbs / 40 lbs consumed = 15 bass
7 lb top out = 600 lbs / 46 lbs consumed = 13 bass
8 lb top out = 600 lbs / 52 lbs consumed = 11.5 bass
9 lb top out = 600 lbs / 58 lbs consumed = 10.3 bass

Now, all of these numbers spend your fish mass allotment with the original stocking. If you wanted different year classes of fish, it would likely to be better to stock 1-2 (maybe 3) female bass year based on what you would be happy with at top out weight (Could also be slightly more for initial stocking). This formula also doesn't account for supplemental forage stockings. If you had planned on adding large live forage yearly, that poundage could be added to your consumable yearly forage (but also be expensive).

Especially without golden shiners, I would carefully consider Bill's suggestion of adding yellow perch as additional forage. These would be a tasty addition for both you and those big girl bass!

Thanks for all of the great information guys!

It does sound like the best way to create a trophy bass pond is to start out as a multi-millionaire!

[I apologize to you (For the Family) if this turns into a threadjack. I am trying to find an alternative DIY route for your type of goals.]

Bill, Theo, and all others:

Would it be feasible to start with a smaller grow-out pond to develop your female-only LMB population in the main pond?

I was thinking of stocking the small pond with the best class of available bass from your supplier. Feed them until the next spring, and then harvest bass right before the spawn. Identify the females and move over the optimal number for Year 1. Repeat the process again in Year 3(?), such that you are always ladder stocking a few choice female LMB into the main pond.

1.) How to harvest the female bass for transport?

Can you use a large lift net under the feeder to get a few gals without making them hook shy?

Can you do your own version of an electro-survey at the feeder to safely harvest a few fish?

2.) Moving fish to a new pond is always a topic discussed on Pond Boss, with differing levels of success.

Other than safe fish handling, what would be the best ideas to get the big gals moved over to the main pond?

Having the few bass that "fail to thrive" actually die, would probably be a better result than having them take up part of the biomass weight of predators in the pond.

3.) What to do with the grow-out pond as it matures?

I was thinking of turning off the feeder for a week, and having an entire Boy Scout troop come over and catch bass when they hit the 10-12" range and send them home with smiles and a bag of fillets! You could then drain down the pond and seine the remainder if you had some neighbors that wanted bass.

You could then start the process over again with zero fish in the pond with some new stock or with some brood fish you previously saved. That round would be used to once again stock a few select females into the main pond.

My process would NOT be prohibitively expensive, but would require a lot of labor hours. Hopefully they would mostly be fun?

I am sure the experts can readily improve on my hare-brained scheme! Maybe even come up with some workable ideas for the OP, or other later readers.

For best potential, we all want to buy the shooters (jumpers-fast growers) problem is unless we raise the fish from 2-3", we don't get to see the shooters because most growers take the top of the top for their own reasons, so yes, growing from small fingerlings in a separate pond to a sex size is not a bad idea.
Looking at bass prior to spawn is about 75% accurate, cath tubes are 99.9% which takes some time to learn, break a glass tube in a fish it becomes fillets..
I love the math above, it takes a lot of information and clears the trash out to see the raw numbers-which to most is unbelievable-but you still have to determine what your specific water body will grow in forage per acre and it has to be available in all sizes, not just pounds-you guys above all know that-I'm just writing it down for reference.

Does anyone know? Who sells all female bass? When one buys all female bass what method is used to select those fish?

Snipe - Cecil sent me a sample of a plastic cath tube. Do these work as well as glass tubes?

Here is a link to our PBoss thread that discussed back in 2014 using all female bass. In the thread it was mentioned that American Sportfish grows all female bass using a chemical modification on eggs / fry.

https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=387220#Post387220

Pond Boss article Mar –Apr 2021 p:30-33. All - Female Bass. Lusk provides the ideas from Greg Grimes, Troy Goldsby and himself from their experiences of using all female bass. Some important points were:
"Finding all female bass is uncertain, almost impossible".
" Get one male from any source and you messed up the whole concept".
"All females demand a very strong forage base ... building it for two to three years before bass".
"Think a mature 4 - 5 year pond worth of forage before any bass at 20 - 50 bass lbs /ac". These numbers could amount to 10-16 bass at 2 - 3 lb each per acre.
"Expect double $$ for females".
"Need intense management - cull ones at 100-110 RW when others are 130-140 RW".
"6lb bass needs 6" BG, 8 " trout or big shad as main foods".
"Plan on at least twice a year stocking supplemental big sizes of forage to suit biggest bass sizes to stay ahead of them so they continue to grow" -
"open the check book".
"You need unnatural management to make it work".

Bill, plastic is fine. I like glass because the suction seal is better but they need to be handled carefully.. Either can be soaked in 3-5% H2O2 to sterilize.
This comment:
" Get one male from any source and you messed up the whole concept".
can be avoided if unsure with cath tube, leave it out, if you get egg it is 100%.. but it's like buying fish from a supplier and "assuming" you are getting what you bought. In this case, there is zero margin for error and learning the process assures success but it may take a purchase of 300 fish to get 100 confirmed females and each fish has to be individually sedated, that's very labor intensive but the only way to do it correctly. $30-$50 per fish is not unrealistic because you have "possibly" 200 males nobody wants except for free..

A number of years ago I cath'ed a bunch of LMB to get females for a pond. I ran closer to 60% male, 40% female in the group of LMB I had to work with......

Couple of things that has to be done.

1) You have to cath the fish at the right time of the year - pre-spawn. After late June, you are typically done until next year.
2) The fish have to be large enough to be of spawning size - it doesn't work well on 12" or smaller fish, and I'd rather try it on 14" or larger fish.
3) Unless the fish are pellet trained, transferring those larger fish to a pond and expecting them to figure out where to go to get their food is an iffy thing.if you expect those fish to keep growing quickly.

I think one use for male bass is to use them in a pond such as a perch pond where you want the predator to stay smaller and focus its eating of fish that have the smaller size ranges. The male bass would be a tool for biasing the predation toward small fish. Plus all male bass would not spawn in the pond and cause problems with too much bass predation of the preferred fish crop. Again - good management of the predator population can be a big asset for fishery management.

esshup, we are getting about 80-85% confirmed at 8-10". If they can't be sexed by 12" early Feb, they get culled.
On 11"+ you can confirm about 75% of the females by October.
No pellets, these are all conditioned on Koi from 4"+, for example, fish are gathered in late Sept at 4-6" and moved inside and kept at 50 degs through winter with a fair amount of Koi. April 1st they go back outside in 4 ac grow outs full of fresh Koi and then are collected again in late Sept at 8-10". Anything above average is desired but if it can't be sexed, it's removed. Most of the 8-10" fish can be sexed and that same 80-85% will spawn in tank when temps are brought up in Feb.
To see the best genetics, the shooters during the next period outdoors are separated the following year for the best brood stock.
Then the goal is best growth of the offspring but they still need to produce stock for reproduction to choose from so it's 2 years before the shooters are separated.
Yes, we are talking about 2 different goals here, but if fast growing fish are a part of the target for trophy potential, those that don't mature need to be removed completely.
The difference is those shooters that appear from the 8-10-12" fish are the one's we want for breeders for stock to raise and sex for trophy ponds. My point??? If you can't sex them until 14-15", the potential to grow a trophy is not good.
I also think there is a misunderstanding on the sexing process because seldom do we see sperm, only egg but we can have extra females without issue-until we need to eliminate the male from the equation, then we get in trouble assuming it's a male because we didn't get any egg. 75% of males you won't see sperm, if you do, it's a bonus indicator but not the norm.
Keep in mind, these are fish that are observed every day to confirm males on nests that can be pit tagged at that point. There are 2 categories..female and unsure, which brings me to another point for Cody, another reason for glass vs plastic is sperm will show on the end of glass that will not show on plastic which removes fish from the "unsure category" but not many.

Your point #3 is definitely one of the problems when attempting to transfer fish from one pond to another and expecting them to thrive.

Follow up questions:

A.) For pellet-trained fish (of any species), are there any estimates for what % of their diet is pellets versus how much forage they still capture?

B.) If you transfer a low number of predators to a pond teeming with forage AND without existing predators, would that significantly reduce the odds of the new predators failing to thrive. I would assume abundant forage, including some in the exact optimal size range, combined with the forage NOT being trained to avoid predation would be a very encouraging environment for the introduced LMB.

Bill, that sounds like an excellent use for a population of all male LMB!

I can imagine that might be quite effective when someone wanted to create a trophy BG fishery. Once the BG became too big too eat for the male LMB, they would be safe to keep growing from large to "trophy" status. A horde of hungry, smaller LMB should be quite effective at keeping down the TOTAL BG population.

Only when the pond began pushing up against the total fish biomass limits would you need to cull some LMB for pond safety.

Follow up questions:

A.) When pellet feeding to target the "trophy" BG, I assume you can control which fish species gets the feed by using the correct pellet size? If you did manage to get a population that was 100% male, then there would be zero little bass competing with the BG for the feed.

B.) If you tried to create a "natural" trophy BG pond, would the biggest BG have enough forage available for them to "pig out" all year, or would the bass population have a significant overlap in consuming the preferred BG forage?

Snipe, thanks for continuing to post the fascinating details about the state's ongoing LMB improvement project!

If I am reading your post above correctly, then it appears that it is much more certain to create a 100% female LMB pond than a 100% male LMB pond?

(I just typed a post above about the possible advantage of a 100% male LMB pond. As usual, it appears that I am a day late and a dollar short!)

Since it is not certain to express milt/sperm from a male LMB, how effective is sexing utilizing the "observational behavior" method? For example, if you made a grow-out pond with some good area for bass nests, could you get a 100% male LMB sample if you only took the bass guarding the nest with a cast net?

P.S. Which raises another question - if you want to post about the "capture" methods that are used at the state fishery. For example, how do you selectively capture the shooters from a tank of 8-10" bass? (Or do you just capture them all and then hand sort for the shooters?)

Shooters are all hand sorted but backpack electrofishing methods are used in concrete tanks also. Cast net is very hard on a stressed, adult male guarding a nest.
Keep in mind on females that just because they have eggs doesn't mean they are going to lay them. At young age, LMB are similar to walleye in that they may go 2 years with eggs-and reabsorb them, then next year they may actually lay eggs. Stress, water conditions, population structure etc, all will play a role in whether those eggs mature or not, but for the purpose of female only stocking, it doesn't matter if they lay-which the may blow them or reabsorb but no production occurs because (hopefully) no males give them a spot-or lead them in to spawn anyway.
Different ways of looking at all of this.. Point is, if eggs are confirmed, it's 100%, but still another side to how they are selected and another story about what can be done with the unconfirmed fish.
Collecting for reproduction and collecting for trophy potential is 2 completely different goals.
Keep in mind also, males will grow to 6-6.5lbs at the same rate a female grows under specific conditions.

A male bass of 6 - 6.5 lbs is a BIG bass for many anglers. I did not realize male bass were able to grow that big. Enlightening.

Theo seizing the chance to use a $2 word:
Perhaps you were thinking of FloridaLMB, which exhibit a greater degree of sexual dimorphism than do Northerns.

I didn't know that either Bill... until we started sexing the Bass for indoor spawning last year-had no idea a male could get that big. Most achieve 5-5.5 on a regular basis. Hatchery manager says it's all in the Koi, which I couldn't even begin to speculate on that.
This was my 3rd year with this program and the only person that seemed to be surprised was me..

Like Bill, I also thought that the sexual dimorphism of northern-strain LMB was significant enough that a 6.5# male bass would be rare indeed.

(Dang it, I had to use Theo's $2 word and I don't know where to send his royalty check!)

Perhaps Snipe seeing males that large is because he is working in the program where they are almost shoving koi down the gullets of their bass?

Of course, I just assumed when we caught big (for Kansas) LMB that they were gals. I think the biggest LMB that we typically caught that had abraded chins and torn up tails were maybe 3.5# - 4# max. I figured these were males that were torn up due to making and then guarding the nests. The biggest LMB we caught in that lake were about 7.5#, and we figured they were female.

However, we never tried to deliberately make a sex determination on a bass, so I actually know literally nothing on the male/female size debate!

Those bass are HUGE and only got that way because appropriate sized Koi were fed in optimum numbers in a very controlled arena..
I can tell you that KS pulls these genetics from Colorado, they are spoon-fed and used for indoor spawning only, but again, small fish are culled-quickly.. they want nothing less than a 4lb male for this program but I learned that what I knew about Bass-LMB-was nothing in real life for what these guys grow.

Snipe:

If you had to put a dollar figure on each female LMB at that size, what would be the retail price for say, 100 fish? Would that $$ amount be a viable business decision to tie up a pond for that length of time, plus whatever water was needed to grow the koi? Or are the koi being sourced off site?

Scott, beings this entire process is performed in the hatchery, they have several things on their side that you and I don't.
#1, and the biggest deal-Someone else is paying the bill.
#2, the number of raceways allow them to spawn Koi on spawntex mats that are quickly removed and placed in hatch raceways-both indoors and out, so there is a constant supply of correct forage size year around.
To make this worth-while for us it would take 3,000 fish to 8-10" to get 1500 females providing no losses so a guess is start with 4000-5000.
My figures would be a return of 20-25$ a fish after overhead on the females and 5-7$ on the males at the 10" mark.
I think 45-50$ a fish retail would work "IF" the demand will handle production and sales of 1500 fish sold per season. Problem I see is unlike some species, this WILL increase labor with an increase in number due to the amount of time consumed per fish so it may drive the price higher just due to time involved.
I seen a note above about chemical alteration of sex of fish.. as Colorado is finding out, there are side effects to this that appear long after raising and stocking...some WAE are being found now that are Hermaphrodites and LMB are not any different in how this change occurs so I would never trust it, but they were sure this was a done-deal.. That's what mother nature does when we alter what shouldn't have been.
Snipe:

If you had to put a dollar figure on each female LMB at that size, what would be the retail price for say, 100 fish? Would that $$ amount be a viable business decision to tie up a pond for that length of time, plus whatever water was needed to grow the koi? Or are the koi being sourced off site?
If I were asked for 100 Females and that's all I was asked to raise, it would be 100$ a fish minimum

Thanks for the update, Snipe!

Those prices were exactly why I was speculating about possible DIY poor-boy versions of trying to accomplish close to the same results.

100 females at $100/fish is a $10,000 project. You could build a grow-out pond, feed the bass, and pick the shooter females for much less than that, and maybe put 5 good ones in the female-only LMB main pond every year or two.

Might not produce state record LMB (like the YP aficionados are doing), but you should be able to make a pretty darn good LMB "trophy" pond if that is your goal.

Great discussion and lots of new information to me in this thread.

I've said this before several times. Adult forage fed positively sexed female LMB at 1 lb are worth $100. My humble opinion. They may be worth more than that.

Lots of money is spent compensating for intra-species competition that would otherwise prevent LMB from attaining trophy size. It would take far less than that (even at $100/LMB) to maintain a ladder in an all female trophy pond. 2 fish/acre year (harvesting any fish caught > 5 years of age) is all that is required (assuming otters don't wipe one out). $200/acre/year for the ladder? That's nothing. People pay $250 for a bag of shiner fry which results are questionable at best. What about forage ponds? What is the investment there? What about the value of time needed to cull competing LMB recruits? How much is a person's time worth and especially if they are unable or unwilling to harvest the sufficient number of LMB?

I guess the point I am making is that provided supply and demand meet ... that cost can be justified as a good value for the consumer. I don't think the lack of supply is a demand problem. It is probably more of supplier issue. The profit/acre is lower than 2" fingerlings which can number 70,000 or more per acre. If a supplier is selling out of those why would he devote any acreage to the other? He would be better served to increase his production of 2" fingerlings. Also, what about sales of supplemental forage fish? Could this valuable product be diminished by all female management? Ultimately, there is no feasible way to provide everyone with female LMB anyways. It would have to be limited to fewer consumers because there are just too many ponds out there to stock them annually with adult sized LMB.

jpsdad - good thoughts about cost, supply, and demand for female LMB. If someone could develop a way to produce triploid LMB similar to grass carp maybe there would be a market for those bass? Has someone already done this and if not why not? New production possibility?

Bill,

LMB triploids have been demonstrated and tested. The results were not all that favorable for growth. In one study the triploids did grow longer over comparable periods of time but they were of less RW. IOWs they could put more energy in growing longer but the lack of growing gonadal weight caused them to be of lesser RW in the same water than the diploids. After reading this, I was less enthusiastic about triploidy as a means of inducing greater growth. I have come to consider that growth is primarily determined by consumption and what distinguishes fast growing fish is their tendency to eat more prey than their peers. I suspect growth hormone has a lot to do with a fish's consumption. Some have more and thus are inclined to consume more before feeling sated. With regards to the triploids in the study, one thing that was missing for triploids were the hormonal triggers that prompt them to consume in preparation for spawning. The reproduction investment is evidently financed by increased consumption. So the triploids were not doing this same increased consumption simultaneously. That said, the triploids probably had better FCR because none of their growth was being spent on gametes that are ultimately lost to the water when spawning. So triploidy may and probably would induce more efficient growth on the same ration. Triploidy, however, didn't seem to add any kind of increased relative consumption advantage. Also, inducing triploidy requires that all production be artificially spawned which is a disadvantage relative to spawning in ponds or raceways.

The most promising development recently, IMHO, is the discovery that female LMB are heterogametic. This means there are two chromosomes determining the females (YZ). If the egg is fertilized by irradiated sperm then the result is a haploid egg that will divide. If the first division is arrested (same procedure for producing triploids) the egg transforms to a diploid. The result of this will be the development of a normal male or a super female. A super female has two of the sex differentiating chromosome (ZZ) and when bred with a normal male (YY) the offspring are 100% female genotype (where the offspring were also 100% female phenotype in the limited sample of the study). The advantage is that a super female will breed naturally so these females could be used as brood stock that can reproduce in ponds and raceways using these standardized reproduction technologies. Hormone treatment can also produce phenotype males that are genetically (ZZ). Once phenotypic males (ZZ) are produced the production of super females and phenotypic males can be produced by normal spawning methods without any need for pressure treatments. All of these offspring will be ZZ and new males can be differentiated by hormone treatment during the sexual differentiation phase. Phenotypic ZZ males are useful for the production of super females broodstock as 100% of the offspring of these males are super female. Normal YY males would be preferred for the production of fry for the market place as the resultant offspring are 100% normal females when bred with super female.

There is quite a bit of work reaching a place where brood stock can be produced without artificial spawning but once there maintenance of lines is greatly simplified. This, however, may not take off due to a couple considerations related to food fish production. In particular, female LMB may not be as efficient at converting feed to filet and whole body weight. They grow more weight in eggs which are very energy dense and so a given weight of males might be grown on less feed than the same weight of females. Producing all female fry for grow outs could undermine the efficiency and profitability relative to mixed sex production. Gearing up for something like this probably would be limited to a single large producer that provides fry stock for growers serving recreational fisheries.

Possible caveat? Sometimes there is more to the differentiation of sex than the chromosomes. Some genes or gene combinations can influence the ultimate phenotype regardless of genotype. Temperature during sexual differentiation can also play a role. Bottom line? It may be possible (though not yet observed for LMB) that some genotypic females develop into phenotypic males under natural conditions.

Good stuff for consideration, jpsdad. Interesting how one species (us) can fiddle and fool around with Mother Nature.

jpsdad - Thanks - It was a good summary about LMB triploidy and chromosome alteration of LMB.

Bottom line? It may be possible (though not yet observed for LMB) that some genotypic females develop into phenotypic males under natural conditions.
jpsdad, this is exactly what happened and is happening in Colorado with WAE. They have abandoned the program because of this which leads back to doing it the old fashioned way to get a 100% female only situation. The input to this-if you do it right-is tremendous because you need to pull shooters from at least 3 generations and sex female shooters from the 4th to get the best potential genetic.
I guess where I'm going with this is that is is possible to sex and provide females with intent to have trophy potential but are the customers really getting that potential if the grower sexes the first year class? No.
It's going to take a grower that is willing to work this program for 4-5 years to build the gene pool and then sell stock sexed from there. At that point, your best males and females each need to be held back for reproduction going fwd.
With that said, I'm going to say 100$ a fish is not enough if you really want to supply true trophy potential, and if someone is offering female only for 35$ a fish, I'd run hard and fast.

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.

Do you have some reference on the procedures or reference document where the studies are being done?
I "think" we are talking about the same process but I believe this is the process that has been abandoned due to unexpected results-long term. Just trying to tie it together, I know our Centrarchid guru at Meade was hot into this and I spoke with him late today about the altering of chromosome channels. He's curious as well if there is new data available.

Dang Guys, I just renovated a whole 2-2.5 acre pond to create an all-female trophy lake. I am an avid LMB/SMB angler in KY/TN who wants to catch a LARGE (edit - Large being over 8lbs) bass from time to time in my back yard. The pond STILL has no predators in it. You can walk on the backs of the BG that surround my dock when they hear footsteps. Creating a grow out pond has my interest. I actually have 2 ponds within 30 yards of my house. I half own the other. Property line goes straight through the middle of the pond. The other is about 3/4 an acre. Its population is stunted bass, and not many - Gizzard Shad, and BG. Thats IT! NO CC, no BIG LMB. All bass are about 1-2lbs.It has a Filamentous and cattail issue, but since my neighbor fishes often and drags fish to take pics, I have ignored that one to care/build the other.

Pond A = 2 acre pond
Pond B = 3/4 acre pond

Would it be of good practice to pull forage from pond A to put into pond B to increase grow out rates?

Could I have pond B be my big BG pond since most bass are only 1-2lbs? Pond B is not pellet fed.

This has been 1 HELLOVA reread/visit. You folks edu-ma-cated 1 country redneck ! lol

FTF, stunted LMB will allow some bigger BG in lower numbers to continue to grow because they can't eat them. Problem is, if you want to use the other pond for forage production I think larger numbers of medium-stunted BG-are better forage than smaller numbers of bigger BG. I think for best trophy potential, I think you'll have to continue stocking every BG you can obtain and therefore I would be removing the stunted LMB from pond #2, maybe even cut the tails off of the 9-10" under fish and make forage out of them also..
If you don't have a back-up forage pond, I believe you are going to be buying medium sized BG by the thousands to keep your big bass growing at the highest rate.