The pond has a mix of fish and sizes in it. We stocked it 10 years ago before I joined the military and it was an awesome little fishing hole for several years. Then the problems started to evolve. The farmer raises lots of hogs and spreads his manure in surrounding fields and some of it runs off into the pond. He has started keeping a buffer zone of about 40 yards of grass around the pond but in the spring it just rains to much to be controled. Then a couple years ago he said there was a big turn over when we had a dry hot summer and he thought it killed all the fish. Last year I started working on the pond by dragging the FA out with my boat and I started fishing it to see what was left in it. I caught hundreds of green sunfish and pitched them out and to my surprise I caught a few nice bass and some small ones. I transfered 15 10-14inch bass from another pond and about 100 bluegill also. I talked to him about buying Tilapia from you, but he doesnt really want to put any money into the pond. He basically gave me the rights to do what ever I want with the pond. So I have a friend who is in the hobby of breeding a few fish to sell and he started a small aquaponics set up and had 100's of baby blue tilapia. I got 14 from him and have them in a 55 gallon tank right now. My plan was to breed them over the winter and release them in the spring. My problem is if I can keep water quality good enough to get them big enough to make it until spring. I have a 300 gallon tank that I could keep them in but I still dont know if that will hold enough and raise them big enough that they wont just be bass bait when I release them. My ultimate goal is to release them, have them eat most of the FA, then the green sunfish will be vulnerable to the bass, then fall comes and I can scoop up as many as I can find and fry em up. Let me know what you think of this plan and thanks for the help. Ive heard nothing but good stuff about you.
