Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations to many tilapia

I have a 4.5 acre pond in central Florida, retention pond. It drops off steep on all sides down to 26ft. There is not much shallow water. Currently there is very few bass in it. It is overloaded with tilapia. I recently put a lot of structure in it as there was none, clean bottom. I put 500 2" bass in it 2 years ago and I have not seen them in over a year. I have seen a few and caught one nice fat young fish, 2lbs. I have caught about 30 bass from the 1-3 lb range from other locations and added them to my pond. How do I get control of the tilapia population? I hope the bass will eventually control the tilapia population. How do I ensure the baby bass get past the point of being prey and become predators?

Short of draining and starting over, I don't think you will be able to control the tilapia.. Maybe someone else will have another idea

i was afraid of that. It is a community retention pond that I want to be a place for my kids to catch bass.

i was afraid of that. It is a community retention pond that I want to be a place for my kids to catch bass.

Wrenchbass I never heard of tilapia eating LMB always the other way around. Maybe an expert will chime in and explain. It sounds like a 4.5 acre buffet for LMB to me but I don’t have tilapia or LMB.
Heppy

I expect the baby bass are eating each other. I once had some babies and put them in a creek on my place. I was watching 2 that were side by side. All at once, ones tail was sticking out of the other ones mouth. So, I went back and bought some more and put them in an aquarium. The same thing happened

wrenchbass,

Moz. TP often eat fish. This has been noted in a number of papers. Here we have blues in some power plant lakes. Fishermen catch some will fishing for bass on lures like inline spinners and micro crank-baits. One of our members stocked TP in the pond's first year and they obliterated his minnow population. Soooo .... a two inch LMB might be on the menu. I would stock larger one's (say 12" or bigger).

TP ... where they live year round ... are not as good for forage as BG. LMB > 20" benefit the most and until the reach 16" may grow slowly in combination with TP

I can't get the tilapia outof my poind either.

Invite a local bowfishing club to come over? if you are in a subdivision youll likely need to get permission.

Stock larger bass.

GL

I know this isn't Tilapia control but when I first started looking at my pond it was super over populated with tiny BG and what looked like a million shiners. It's a 1 acre pond. I added 100 F1 bass and it took 3-4 years to get the pond close to balanced. It was 5 years before I started pulling any bass out. Last year was a major bass cull. I say that to say it may just take longer than you would like. I thought after 2 years all my bass had died, then the next year they were blasting the top of the water like mad.

At your Fla location do the tilapia experience winter die-off due to cold? The answer to your situation is greatly influenced on this question.

You could seine some tilapia out and add advanced sized LMB (10 in) if needed. But you have to know if the tilapia will die off in winter and plan from there as unchecked the situation will probably result in reaching over carrying capacity and dissolved oxygen issues (assuming no aeration) resulting in a DO crash and die-off.