Scott,
I started harvesting at one year. This pic was taken at one year.
I'm bad about measuring and weighing. We've harvested over a hundred, easy. We do get quite a few in this size also.
I let a lot of the larger ones go, but keep 100% of the smaller ones. My original thought was the larger ones would all be females. That has proven mostly true. I also thought that all the small ones would be males. That hasn't held up, as lots of the smaller ones when cleaned have eggs.
The smaller ones are easy to clean, and taste just fine.
My stocking numbers have been reviewed on this site, and were way too high. I really don't want to comment on them. There was a water problem during transport, and some "may" have died. I saw no floaters, but the pond smelled funny for a few months. I will leave it to the experts here on recommending fish numbers for you. Judging by the number of ribbons I had, I have lots of YP. I haven't worried about over harvesting. The activity at the feeder hasn't changed much in the two years I've been feeding. The feed gets cleaned up very fast.
Hope this helps. I also hope to find out about recruitment this summer. To see, If any of the YP fry are surviving.
