I was going to add to the sentiment above. I would suggest that states that fear the almighty tilapia (like Michigan and others) and forbid stocking them should take heed and instead take measures to control the stocking and spread of GSF. Certainly the aggressive predatory nature, fearless attacks on man and fish, and its incredible ability to survive even a nuclear winter should put it on the list of species to forbid stocking and even to kill on sight. It seems it is every bit on par with the Snakehead and the Asian Carp. While the tilapia has a perfect built in control mechanism in that I don't believe it has ever happened that an ice fisherrman caught a tilapia.
Gotta agree, Mo is one of the states that dont allow Tilapia, no idea why, its not like they gonna take over the state, they dont survive our falls, much less the winters. I think everybody has GSF, whether they like it or not, I dont know of anybody that has stocked them on purpose, they just show up!
I did catch one of the biggest ones Ive ever seen last weekend, that sucker was huge! caught him off a crappie bed where I was catching a bunch of really dark male crappie that were prepping the beds for the ladies, that were out in deeper water out from the area, gravid with eggs.
Caught a whole bunch of crappie over the weekend, hopefully they will have a decent spawn, but we are supposed to be getting 3 to 5 inches of rain over the next four days that may drop the water temps too much again for them to spawn. Probably ruin most of our turkey nests again too, we had a really good hatch last yr and I attribute a lot of the success to virtually no rain during the nesting stage.
All the really good ideas I've ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.
