I made the trip to Buffalo today and picked up 40 6-8 inch lmb, as recommended earlier in this thread. I was very impressed with the setup Mr. Overton has, and the quality of his fish appears to be excellent. There was one mortality from shipping, but I'm thrilled considering they were in the bag for four hours.
I also bought 16 blue catfish, thinking that even though they will compete with my green sunfish for feed, they will also prey on smaller fish. I believe that right now these smaller fish compete much more with the potential trophy fish than blue catfish until they reach larger sizes (5+ lbs?), at which point the catfish will be great fishing to try and remove.
I realize that these catfish have the potential to really do some damage on my stocker fish population later, but this is at least two years down the road assuming a growth rate of 2 1/2 lbs per year. At this point some stockers will begin to die due to angling mortality and old age anyways. The goal would still be to remove as many of these catfish as possible before they are large enough to eat the largest GSF.
I hope that by the end of this summer before I leave for college, the broodfish in my aquaponics system will reach 8 inches, eventually replacing some of the fish from the original stocking that die or are eaten.
