ML,
I appreciate your comments and your results. Here's my thinking, or the "rest of the story." At some point, your bass relative weights will begin to decline. They have to. At that point, how will you support the bass population? There's not a practical way, other than full time, surviving forage fish which can consistently reproduce. Tilapia add forage fish and prop up a bass population while helping bluegill survival rates. But, without harvesting selected size classes of bass, you can only prop up a fish population for so long, then it declines. With tilapia, that bass population will reach a point, then decline much more rapidly than with bluegill. When that finally happens, harvest of bass will be mandatory, and replacing a missing forage fish population will be tough. That's all I'm saying.
Changing direction, I will post some observations I have made this year in my own ponds with tilapia. It's been interesting. I have used tilapia to prop up a bass population, I have raised them to sell before. But, this year, I did something totally different, and it has been interesting. I'll post it on the blog in a few minutes.
I am a fan of tilapia....
