I have news for everybody. Cecil Baird haunts my dreams. Every time I think that I'm doing something special with one of my ponds I'm reminded that Mr. Baird is growing "Brick Trout" or yellow perch the size of big walleyes.
What he's doing over there is unbelievable. I'm sure that there's nothing like that anywhere else in the country.
So I've decided to finally do something about it. I went to Tractor Supply Company and used all of the knowledge I've gleaned from various sources and decided to start a yellow perch project.
I contacted a perch grower in Sutton, NE which is only one hour away from here (thank goodness) and politely explained to him why I wanted him to grade some perch for me. I told him how someone in Indiana was using all female yellow perch and growing monsters. He nodded knowingly and agreed to grade off for me the biggest perch in his tank. From a tank of maybe 5,000 yellow perch he selected 450 of the biggest ones and assured me that a large percentage would end up being female.
From Tractor Supply Company I used a 10% off coupon and purchased a 150 gallon Rubbermaid tank with a 1.25 inch integrated outlet. The college kid was fascinated as I told him that I wanted to dribble water in at 30 gallons/hour but have the water from the bottom of the tank to be the first to exit so I could keep my water as clean as possible. I also designed the tank so that I could drain water with a valve quickly to draw suspended solids out of the tank without letting any fish out.
So far after about two weeks I have yellow perch that are eating readily and some even appear to be getting a little bigger. The well water will come in at a constant 54 degrees all winter and I have added a small aerator. Hopefully this will serve as a redundancy so that if either the hose or the aerator fail that the other will continue to supply enough oxygen so the fish don't perish before I remedy the situation.
My goal is to select off the biggest fish, hopefully that are visibly carrying eggs next spring, or later if necessary and use them to stock my new .15 acre pond that will have the horizontal aeration.
