The flip side of "hybrid vigor" is outbreeding depression.
As your Floridas or F1s breed with your northern-strain bass, the pond can develop Fx generation bass. These can exhibit outbreeding depression and have the worst of the genetics of both strains. These bass can have both slower growth and lower spawning success.
Harbin Fish Farm is not too far from you, and sometimes has pellet-trained F1s for sale. Some of the other Oklahoma suppliers also carry F1s.
It might work for you to ladder stock some F1s every few years.
Your other idea to just improve the genetics of your northern-strain LMB by adding a new source of northern-strain genes to your bass population might actually be a bigger benefit.
I am SOOOO not an expert on this topic. Maybe some of the actual experts will drop into your thread. Hopefully Snipe will drop in too - I believe he actually works with the state of Kansas people on improving the genetics of our LMB across the state reservoirs.
Good luck on this endeavor. If you have great success on this, then I definitely want to try to copy your results!
