CJ
You hit the nail on the head, while I did not try any backcrosses we expected that the hybrid would be fertile. For that reason (among others) I was not allowed to raise any of those fish in my lab, all of the fertilized eggs were shipped off to Belgium for rearing. From what I recall the hybrid perch (Perca) accepted formulated feed better than the control yellow perch and unlike the yellow perch fry could be easily trained on feed rather than going through a zooplankton (live feed stage) this is probably due to the eurasian eggs producing larger fry than we typically see in our yellow perch. In general hybrid growth was slightly faster than the eurasian parental stock and much better than the American parental stock. Because of the potential for escape and establishment of this potentially invasive species I rather doubt that they would be allowed into the country. At the time I was only able to bring in gametes and even that was closely monitored by the USDA. If i can I'll try to find the publication on these fish and give you the reference. On another note our hybrid walleyes (saugeyes) are going to market within the next few weeks. After 1 year of growth in a recycle system the fish averaged 1.5 lbs and some of the bigger ones were over 2lbs. They were started as eggs last April and trainied to formulated feed indoors as fry. The scaled skin-on fillet yields were 50% or a little better and I can tell you they fried brown and tasted mighty fine.