Ryan,

Interesting how we try and try to manage our ponds according to our plan, but seems like something always happens to undo our best efforts...at least it always seems to work that way with me. Frustrating, but it does keep things interesting.

My experience with gizzards turned out to be a total non-event. I stocked them and the predators eliminated them. Never even got the chance to see if they were helpful or harmful. The HSB were a major factor in gizzard elimination, I believe. The gizzards stayed primarily in open water where they were easy targets for the HSB. While the gizzards are small, the HSB can really rip them up.

However, if the gizzards get too large for the relatively small mouth of the HSB, then the large LMB is the best hope to control/eliminate them.

If the gizzards are only 1.5 inches now, stocking HSB before the gizzards grow much larger would seem to be a logical approach. Also, after Tilapia die-out this year, the forage choices are somewhat reduced and perhaps the HSB in combo with the LMB would then be more effective on the gizzards.

Stocking the HSB in your area of the country seems like a low risk option. However, you need to find HSB that are large enough to avoid LMB predation.

As far as re-stocking Tilapia next spring, assuming you stock HSB now as part of a gizzard elimination approach, I think I would wait until spring to decide on Tilapia and base my decision on what the gizzard situation looked like at that time. To eliminate gizzards, it seems you would need to focus the predators on them and not offer Tilapia to the predators as alternative forage.

I have mixed feelings about loosing all the gizzards in my pond. On the one hand, it would have been interesting to see what they could do for the top-end large Florida LMB, but on the other hand, in order to effectively control them I probably couldn’t stock Tilapia also. Tilapia has proven to be a far better choice for me in my ponds.