All the stuff that contributes to fish growth like water quality, water movement, temperature, ph, nutrition, and Elevation*** (Hadn't thought of elevation before. Something to do with atmospheric pressure.) is confusing, but interesting.

I decided to take an aquaculture class this quarter, and I'm discovering what before should have been obvious. All of the above criteria vary between pretty much every species (even those subspecies closely related)... I'm having trouble keeping up.

With that said, I had a nice little tidbit of information in lecture the other day.

In trout and other salmonids it takes 330 grams of protein from a modern hatchery formulated diet to produce 1 pound of fish.

A natural forage diet however only takes 143 grams of protein in order to produce 1 pound of fish.

What does that tell us when we are talking about fish we currently know the most about nutritionally (followed closely by catfish of course)?

It tells us that we still are not getting the formula right, and there is a tremendous amount of room for improvement.

Ewest,

I think I am going to start bringing a thermometer with me and if the water is at around 40 degrees I might not even bother fishing. Then again, based on the intel you have provided I might just drag a night-crawler across the bottom reeeaaaallly slowwwww.

Do you know if that article was published just in the bass times, or is it going to be in a peer reviewed journal as well? I want to read up on that. Cool stuff.


Dr. Flores D.V.M.