In a pond with no supplemental feeding, how much will a 9 inch trout grow in 3-4 months, as it starts to heat up?
We stock trout into our creek by our hunting cabin every late March. In 3 months, they'll put on about a half inch per month without supplemental feed. However, the creek is absolutely loaded with forage fish, crayfish and insect hatches. The brown trout seem to grow a bit faster. However, with your goals, I would stick with rainbows.
Could I raise them from egg, or would they have to be fingerling?
You could raise them from egg, however you would have to invest in a lot of equipment that would run in the thousands... Fingerlings would be more reasonable, but still would be an expensive proposition.
Also would they be cannabilistic?
Yes, they would be VERY cannibalistic! Trout growers are constantly having to grade their fish to keep them from eating each other. This is more important with brown trout, but rainbows will also have the same issue.
Would I do this in a cage at a pond, or in a controlled environment like tubs in my garage?
If you were going to be hatching the trout from egg, you'd need specialized equipment. Your biggest challenge will be finding cold high quality water to use, whether raising trout from egg or as a fingerling. A hatchery jar, like the McDonald type would work. What is your source of cold 60-65 degree water going to be? You're going to need this cold water even during the summer months to get your trout to the desirable size you're looking for. The effort to hatch and then raise the trout would be incredibly expensive and time consuming. Cecil may be able to give you better info on how he has done it on a small scale if he has raised trout from eggs.
Once again where would I get the eggs/small trout. I was thinking if they were small enough I would just have them overnighted, but dont know if that would ever be an option.
Overnighting eyed eggs wouldn't be an issue. Overnighting small fingerling trout maybe an option, but I would have to imagine it would be costly as you would have to keep them in extremely uncrowded conditions in the shipping containers.
I think your best bet would be to find the nearest hatchery and contracting out with someone to haul trout to you... The amount of money and time you'd have to put into raising trout from eggs or small fingerlings would far exceed the cost of paying for the trout to be hauled to you.
