Hey all sorry I have not been on here for a while. Thanks Bill for the PM.
Jeff I am between Dayton and Columbus. My pond is 1.5 acres and I stocked it with LMB, BG, CC and red eared sunfish. The tilapia varied in size quite a bit but most of them were 6-12" and stocked at 30 lbs/ac. I did see significant numbers of very small babies in the pond and several adults that had babies in their mouths (these fish are mouth brooding cichlids). However, I never did see any juveniles in the pond this summer but having said that, I did not see many adults either. Some of the adults are tan in color with faint vertical stripes and some are solid white. The white ones stick out like a sore thumb but the tan ones are much harder to see.
The largest adults I saw were probably 4lbs. I only was able to catch one fish on a red worm but tried raisins, dried cherries and grapes... nothing really worked. Some of them did start hitting the pellets that I feed so Stubby's might be an option. I will be trying to snag them next year. BTW, I only saw one dead tilapia this Fall and it was a large adult that was drug out of the pond. I suspect that a raccoon took an interest in it. I expected to see many dead floating fish but fortunately that did not happen.
All in all I am very happy with using Rainman's tilapia for FA control!
sean
