Bill and Don My pond is only 1/2 acre the FA is around the edges out to about 12" to 24" in some spots. average deepth is about 5 or 6ft. I have trees around pond and it gets a lot of leaves in fall. Seems everytime a clump floats to surface it has deads leaves in the clumps. It rained here a couple days ago so pond don't seem to have as much floating now. The rain seems to knock it down, but as soon as it warms up I'm sure it will start floating up. Last year I put in 170 1/4 pounders and they cleaned up FA in 3 weeks. The guy I got the Niles Tilapia from this year knows my last years supplier and told me that last years fish were probably all males bc supplier raised them for food fish and males grow faster he told me. He showed me how to tell males from females and gave me a mix of both and said these will reproduce as soon as it gets warmer. He has been raising them since 1992 but is done at end of May every year and they have a big fish fry and shuts down operation for the summer. And yes I was please to pay $2 each since they are ready to reproduce. Some of them looked like they had eggs in them when I got them. My pond overflows to just lower ground so I don't worry about them getting in to any streams. I am trying to stay away from chemicals since my house water supply is a 140ft drilled well. Also sunday nite my son was casting a ultra lite using small white plastic curly tail grub and was having a blast catching them 1 pounders, should of seen the fight. Promise to keep you informed of the progress.
PO