Some of you may recall that I've been running an experiment on the use of red-bellied Pacu in ponds and started the experiment this past January with a few 2-3 inch fish which were grown-out in an indoor facility and stocked in the ponds around April 1.
The results thus far have been absolutely stunning to me and just a little on the scary side. This evening I decided to try to catch a big hook shy Florida LMB. I rigged up a live 4 inch CNBG and sure enough hooked a 10 pound class Florida LMB that flared its gills as it threw the CNBG back at me in a head over tail jump. A second attempt at another Florida provided a most surprising result...a 2.7 pound Pacu that measured 14.5 inches. To add shock to the surprise, this same fish has now been caught 4 times in a variety of ways since being stocked around April 1.
The good news is that this Pacu is not hook shy...the bad news may be that it ate a live 4 inch CNBG which was impaled on a circle hook. The Pacu were intended to be looked at as a possible grass carp replacement....not a mainline predator.
These fish are growing at about 1 pound a month and at that rate should provide some interesting fishing this fall...assuming there are any other fish left in the pond. For a running set of pictures of these amazing fish go to my web site at:
http://www.meadowlarkponds.com/grasscarp.htm and scroll down to see the sequence of pictures, including the one from this evening. As the summer goes on, I'll post additional pictures of this interesting fish.
