If you had to put a dollar figure on each female LMB at that size, what would be the retail price for say, 100 fish? Would that $$ amount be a viable business decision to tie up a pond for that length of time, plus whatever water was needed to grow the koi? Or are the koi being sourced off site?[/b]
If I were asked for 100 Females and that's all I was asked to raise, it would be 100$ a fish minimum
I've said this before several times. Adult forage fed positively sexed female LMB at 1 lb are worth $100. My humble opinion. They may be worth more than that.
Lots of money is spent compensating for intra-species competition that would otherwise prevent LMB from attaining trophy size. It would take far less than that (even at $100/LMB) to maintain a ladder in an all female trophy pond. 2 fish/acre year (harvesting any fish caught > 5 years of age) is all that is required (assuming otters don't wipe one out). $200/acre/year for the ladder? That's nothing. People pay $250 for a bag of shiner fry which results are questionable at best. What about forage ponds? What is the investment there? What about the value of time needed to cull competing LMB recruits? How much is a person's time worth and especially if they are unable or unwilling to harvest the sufficient number of LMB?
I guess the point I am making is that provided supply and demand meet ... that cost can be justified as a good value for the consumer. I don't think the lack of supply is a demand problem. It is probably more of supplier issue. The profit/acre is lower than 2" fingerlings which can number 70,000 or more per acre. If a supplier is selling out of those why would he devote any acreage to the other? He would be better served to increase his production of 2" fingerlings. Also, what about sales of supplemental forage fish? Could this valuable product be diminished by all female management? Ultimately, there is no feasible way to provide everyone with female LMB anyways. It would have to be limited to fewer consumers because there are just too many ponds out there to stock them annually with adult sized LMB.
