I agree with Chris, My die off is pretty consistent with the first week of December, here in SW Oklahoma anyway.
Rainman or anyone else, I do often see a couple hundred to about 1000 dead in the 3-5 inch range every year. I thought this was great size for my bass to eat. Did they all die at once in a cold snap maybe before the bass got to eat them? Maybe I just had so many that the bass couldn't eat them fast enough? any theories?
Are there any studies about bass and tilapia die off?
Jake, there is not a single "scientific" study I have seen on Tilapia in a sportfish pond environment, yet.
If your goal is to grow huge Bass, stocking Tilapia in numbers that produces more forage than can be consumed would cause the scenario you have described, yet with most Tilapia offspring never growing larger than a couple inches before being eaten, I would not expect to see many tilapia lying in a pond that are of a consumable size for the predators present.
