Originally posted by DaveB:
My question is, how many lbs. of tilapia should I stock now per acre if I do have some hold over? Should I do what I did last year and go again with 50 lb. per acre, or back off to maybe 30 lb. per acre with the fear being that I might one day start to have tilapia interfering with my largemouth spawning.
DaveB,
Your observations on LMB RW increases match mine also(LMB at 7 pounds with RW over 1.2), but I've never stocked at that high a rate. One important consideration when stocking Tilapia into a LMB pond is the size of the Tilapia and the water temp. If 3 to 4 inch or even 5 and some 6 inch Tilapia are stocked at water temps in the 60's in a LMB pond, most, if not all, of them will be eaten before they are able to make a contribution. Tilapia need to be stocked when water temps are well into the 70's and also should be 7 to 10 inches to avoid predation.
Regarding your fear that Tilapia might interfere with LMB spawning, there isn't(wasn't) much research available on that topic that I could find in the past, primarily because they die-off in most ponds in this country. In Mexico, that isn't the case and there is some interesting research performed several years ago that suggested the presence of large overwintering Tilapia adversely effected the LMB fishing. The research compared LMB fishing in Tilapia stocked lakes with and without netting of Tilapia. The findings clearly indicated that lakes with heavy netting of the larger Tilapia had superior LMB fishing. The scientists conducting the research suggested, based on these results, that larger Tilapia probably prey on the LMB fry.
When considering stocking Tilapia several years ago, I thoroughly researched everything I could find on Tilapia and this is the only negative research info that I found. If they did indeed overwinter in my ponds, I would seriously consider removing all Tilapia above 3 or 4 pounds.
