Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Female Bass stock for Ky pond

I am looking for a supplier of female bass for a pond in Ky. Currently it has 2000 BG, 500 Red Ear, 40lbs of Fat heads in a little over 2 acre pond. All the posts I see have them available in the mid-west states. Anyone know of someone who will deliver/ship 150 female bass?

Check with David Beasley as Solitude Lake Management - They have branch offices in eastern US. David specializes in using all female bass for growing the big trophy bass for ponds. He has written several articles in PBoss magazine about growing and managing all female bass. Managing all female bass is as much art as it is science. Genetics and water quality are very important for accomplishing big bass to keep them growing long term and not having them "hit the wall" becoming food and growth limited.

All female bass will be rather expensive for buying them and then feeding them to grow into trophies.

1. they are rare, a high premium and not cheap fish because they need to be larger size for gender determination. It takes time to grow them to large sizes. Same as buying larger trees - time is money. Separating out the females wastes the male biomass. Who wants to buy slow growing all male medium bass?. where is the market for them?

2. In the long run using all female bass probably saves money to grow trophies because all female gender fish not only provide the big fastest growing fish but it in the long run it reduces cost of managing and dealing with excess slow growing smaller bass and dealing with feeding male bass that are consuming your valuable forage fish and you not having to focus as much time and money on adding more proper forage fish / items to produce the best fish (bass). With all females and not males our Forage fish will last longer because not as many fish predators are present.

Remember as bass grow they eat bigger foods. A very important point for growing trophy fish. Be prepared to enhance the pond's forage base as the bass get bigger. IMO do not over stock initial bass numbers and 150 females in 2+ ac will quickly over eat the forage food base -see later. When that happens you get slowed growth of the females and the longer it takes to reach big bass trophy status. Maximum number to stock the experts suggest would be 50 female bass / ac . This last year with enlightening new fishery experiences and IMO - now that 50/ac is 25/ac too many for producing the best and biggest bass a pond can grow. You can't grow enough forage fish in a 2 ac pond to feed 60-80 big bass /ac as all female bass and have them grow around one lb to 2 lbs /year. I would put in no more than 20 per ac if you want the biggest bass possible for the genetics that you are buying.

The fewer that are stocked the faster they will grow and in the end reach larger sizes and do it in the quickest time. Remember for EACH pound the bass weighs it needs to eat 6 lb of forage fish to keep a maintenance weight (std wt) so it can keep growing. Then to gain 1 lb or 1lb+ PER YEAR it needs an additional 10 lbs of fish. When the LMB hits 6 lbs it needs 36lbs (for maintenance wt) + 10 lbs (46lbs) to get get to just that 7 lb mark. Be prepared to feed those fat females to keep them so they are gaining 1+ lb per year. Sit down and figure out how many forage BG (5"-7") it will take to feed 150 bass each one eating enough fish for bass weights of 5 lb, then 6 lb, then 7 lb then 8 lb. Just 40 total bass (20/ac) at each 8 lbs will be eating 2320 lbs of fish per year. ( example - 8lb X 6lb forage = 48lb + 10lbs added forage to reach 9 lbs. 58lb x 40 bass = 2320lbs. Your 2 ac pond cannot grow that much forage fish and have left over forage brood stock for reproduction next year.

Adding too many females will cost more in the long run to produce trophies because you will need to be adding large forage food items to keep them growing. Large live forage items are EXPENSIVE. BG at 4"-6" cost $2-$3 each as optimal forage for 20"+ bass.. .I would consider adding YP to the female bass pond. A 10"-12" YP makes very good slender easy to swallow food for a 7 - 8 lb bass so they each year have enough food to grow toward 10-12 lbs. Remember with just all female bass there will be no small 6"-12" bass available for the big LM females to eat for dinner. Big bass need big foods to stay at maintenance weight and then some added foods for CONTINUED growth unless you want the females to stay at one size. Food limiting conditions will do that. Bass not growing 1 lb per year means food limiting conditions.

Tell Dave that your were referred to him by Pond Boss Forum.

Bill,

LMB triploids have been demonstrated and tested. The results were not all that favorable for growth. In one study the triploids did grow longer over comparable periods of time but they were of less RW. IOWs they could put more energy in growing longer but the lack of growing gonadal weight caused them to be of lesser RW in the same water than the diploids. After reading this, I was less enthusiastic about triploidy as a means of inducing greater growth. I have come to consider that growth is primarily determined by consumption and what distinguishes fast growing fish is their tendency to eat more prey than their peers. I suspect growth hormone has a lot to do with a fish's consumption. Some have more and thus are inclined to consume more before feeling sated. With regards to the triploids in the study, one thing that was missing for triploids were the hormonal triggers that prompt them to consume in preparation for spawning. The reproduction investment is evidently financed by increased consumption. So the triploids were not doing this same increased consumption simultaneously. That said, the triploids probably had better FCR because none of their growth was being spent on gametes that are ultimately lost to the water when spawning. So triploidy may and probably would induce more efficient growth on the same ration. Triploidy, however, didn't seem to add any kind of increased relative consumption advantage. Also, inducing triploidy requires that all production be artificially spawned which is a disadvantage relative to spawning in ponds or raceways.

The most promising development recently, IMHO, is the discovery that female LMB are heterogametic. This means there are two chromosomes determining the females (YZ). If the egg is fertilized by irradiated sperm then the result is a haploid egg that will divide. If the first division is arrested (same procedure for producing triploids) the egg transforms to a diploid. The result of this will be the development of a normal male or a super female. A super female has two of the sex differentiating chromosome (ZZ) and when bred with a normal male (YY) the offspring are 100% female genotype (where the offspring were also 100% female phenotype in the limited sample of the study). The advantage is that a super female will breed naturally so these females could be used as brood stock that can reproduce in ponds and raceways using these standardized reproduction technologies. Hormone treatment can also produce phenotype males that are genetically (ZZ). Once phenotypic males (ZZ) are produced the production of super females and phenotypic males can be produced by normal spawning methods without any need for pressure treatments. All of these offspring will be ZZ and new males can be differentiated by hormone treatment during the sexual differentiation phase. Phenotypic ZZ males are useful for the production of super females broodstock as 100% of the offspring of these males are super female. Normal YY males would be preferred for the production of fry for the market place as the resultant offspring are 100% normal females when bred with super female.

There is quite a bit of work reaching a place where brood stock can be produced without artificial spawning but once there maintenance of lines is greatly simplified. This, however, may not take off due to a couple considerations related to food fish production. In particular, female LMB may not be as efficient at converting feed to filet and whole body weight. They grow more weight in eggs which are very energy dense and so a given weight of males might be grown on less feed than the same weight of females. Producing all female fry for grow outs could undermine the efficiency and profitability relative to mixed sex production. Gearing up for something like this probably would be limited to a single large producer that provides fry stock for growers serving recreational fisheries.

Possible caveat? Sometimes there is more to the differentiation of sex than the chromosomes. Some genes or gene combinations can influence the ultimate phenotype regardless of genotype. Temperature during sexual differentiation can also play a role. Bottom line? It may be possible (though not yet observed for LMB) that some genotypic females develop into phenotypic males under natural conditions.

From a different angle, let’s look realistically into what it will take to grow 150 all female LMB as 12”-13” stocker females in a 2 ac pond. Feeding them less, ALWAYS lessens their growth rate. A fast growing bass needs to almost daily fill its belly and not just eat a few small fish if you want best possible growth of the bass / predator.

150 1 lb LMB growing to 2 lbs X 6 lb for a maintenance StdWt = 900 lbs forage + 10 lb x150 = 1500lb = 2400lbs total annual forage

150 2 lb to 3 lb X 6lb =1800 lbs + 1500 lbs = 3300lbs annual forage.
150 3 lb to 4 lb X 6lb = 2700 lbs +1500 lbs = 4200lbs annual forage
150 4 lb to 5 lb X 6 lb = 3600 lbs + 1500lbs = 5100lbs annual forage
150 5 lb to 6 lb X 6 lb = 4500 lbs + 1500 lbs = 6000lbs annual forage
150 6 lb to 7 lb X 6 lb = 5400 lbs + 1500 lbs = 6900lbs annual forage
150 7 lb to 8 lb X 6 lb = 6300 lbs + 1500 lbs = 7800lbs annual forage
150 8 lb to 9 lb X 6 lb = 7200 lbs + 1500 lbs = 8700lbs annual forage

Do you see why feeding 150 bass in a 2 acre pond is not a very good plan to grow those 150 female bass into becoming big bass in a 2 ac pond. A regular 2 ac nutrient enriched pond can probably produce 400 – 600 lbs of consumable forage fish per year. Remember there has to be enough uneaten forage fish as brood stock and some forage items for the next growing season.

If someone has to buy medium size forage fish to feed large bass to keep them growing at their best rate this gets pretty expensive. For large bass having to eat minnow size fish the bass expends almost as much energy catching lots of small fish as the nutrition benefit from eating lots of fish that are too small. Learn about optimal foraging theory for the best way to grow bass.

Does anyone know? Who sells all female bass? When one buys all female bass what method is used to select those fish?

Snipe - Cecil sent me a sample of a plastic cath tube. Do these work as well as glass tubes?

Here is a link to our PBoss thread that discussed back in 2014 using all female bass. In the thread it was mentioned that American Sportfish grows all female bass using a chemical modification on eggs / fry.

https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=387220#Post387220

Pond Boss article Mar –Apr 2021 p:30-33. All - Female Bass. Lusk provides the ideas from Greg Grimes, Troy Goldsby and himself from their experiences of using all female bass. Some important points were:
"Finding all female bass is uncertain, almost impossible".
" Get one male from any source and you messed up the whole concept".
"All females demand a very strong forage base ... building it for two to three years before bass".
"Think a mature 4 - 5 year pond worth of forage before any bass at 20 - 50 bass lbs /ac". These numbers could amount to 10-16 bass at 2 - 3 lb each per acre.
"Expect double $$ for females".
"Need intense management - cull ones at 100-110 RW when others are 130-140 RW".
"6lb bass needs 6" BG, 8 " trout or big shad as main foods".
"Plan on at least twice a year stocking supplemental big sizes of forage to suit biggest bass sizes to stay ahead of them so they continue to grow" -
"open the check book".
"You need unnatural management to make it work".

I think one use for male bass is to use them in a pond such as a perch pond where you want the predator to stay smaller and focus its eating of fish that have the smaller size ranges. The male bass would be a tool for biasing the predation toward small fish. Plus all male bass would not spawn in the pond and cause problems with too much bass predation of the preferred fish crop. Again - good management of the predator population can be a big asset for fishery management.

Those bass are HUGE and only got that way because appropriate sized Koi were fed in optimum numbers in a very controlled arena..
I can tell you that KS pulls these genetics from Colorado, they are spoon-fed and used for indoor spawning only, but again, small fish are culled-quickly.. they want nothing less than a 4lb male for this program but I learned that what I knew about Bass-LMB-was nothing in real life for what these guys grow.

Bill, plastic is fine. I like glass because the suction seal is better but they need to be handled carefully.. Either can be soaked in 3-5% H2O2 to sterilize.
This comment:
" Get one male from any source and you messed up the whole concept".
can be avoided if unsure with cath tube, leave it out, if you get egg it is 100%.. but it's like buying fish from a supplier and "assuming" you are getting what you bought. In this case, there is zero margin for error and learning the process assures success but it may take a purchase of 300 fish to get 100 confirmed females and each fish has to be individually sedated, that's very labor intensive but the only way to do it correctly. $30-$50 per fish is not unrealistic because you have "possibly" 200 males nobody wants except for free..

A number of years ago I cath'ed a bunch of LMB to get females for a pond. I ran closer to 60% male, 40% female in the group of LMB I had to work with......

Couple of things that has to be done.

1) You have to cath the fish at the right time of the year - pre-spawn. After late June, you are typically done until next year.
2) The fish have to be large enough to be of spawning size - it doesn't work well on 12" or smaller fish, and I'd rather try it on 14" or larger fish.
3) Unless the fish are pellet trained, transferring those larger fish to a pond and expecting them to figure out where to go to get their food is an iffy thing.if you expect those fish to keep growing quickly.

esshup, we are getting about 80-85% confirmed at 8-10". If they can't be sexed by 12" early Feb, they get culled.
On 11"+ you can confirm about 75% of the females by October.
No pellets, these are all conditioned on Koi from 4"+, for example, fish are gathered in late Sept at 4-6" and moved inside and kept at 50 degs through winter with a fair amount of Koi. April 1st they go back outside in 4 ac grow outs full of fresh Koi and then are collected again in late Sept at 8-10". Anything above average is desired but if it can't be sexed, it's removed. Most of the 8-10" fish can be sexed and that same 80-85% will spawn in tank when temps are brought up in Feb.
To see the best genetics, the shooters during the next period outdoors are separated the following year for the best brood stock.
Then the goal is best growth of the offspring but they still need to produce stock for reproduction to choose from so it's 2 years before the shooters are separated.
Yes, we are talking about 2 different goals here, but if fast growing fish are a part of the target for trophy potential, those that don't mature need to be removed completely.
The difference is those shooters that appear from the 8-10-12" fish are the one's we want for breeders for stock to raise and sex for trophy ponds. My point??? If you can't sex them until 14-15", the potential to grow a trophy is not good.
I also think there is a misunderstanding on the sexing process because seldom do we see sperm, only egg but we can have extra females without issue-until we need to eliminate the male from the equation, then we get in trouble assuming it's a male because we didn't get any egg. 75% of males you won't see sperm, if you do, it's a bonus indicator but not the norm.
Keep in mind, these are fish that are observed every day to confirm males on nests that can be pit tagged at that point. There are 2 categories..female and unsure, which brings me to another point for Cody, another reason for glass vs plastic is sperm will show on the end of glass that will not show on plastic which removes fish from the "unsure category" but not many.

Theo - Female LMB are even more difficult to find compared to smallmouth bass for stocking ponds. See my added notes in your post above. If you can get all female LMB (12"-14") delivered for less than $50 each I think that is a pretty good deal. Growing trophy fish is not a cheap endeavor nor is it easy. That are just two reasons trophy class fish are a high premium value. A lot of time and money and or forage food value goes into growing that trophy size fish of any species.

For best potential, we all want to buy the shooters (jumpers-fast growers) problem is unless we raise the fish from 2-3", we don't get to see the shooters because most growers take the top of the top for their own reasons, so yes, growing from small fingerlings in a separate pond to a sex size is not a bad idea.
Looking at bass prior to spawn is about 75% accurate, cath tubes are 99.9% which takes some time to learn, break a glass tube in a fish it becomes fillets..
I love the math above, it takes a lot of information and clears the trash out to see the raw numbers-which to most is unbelievable-but you still have to determine what your specific water body will grow in forage per acre and it has to be available in all sizes, not just pounds-you guys above all know that-I'm just writing it down for reference.

Shooters are all hand sorted but backpack electrofishing methods are used in concrete tanks also. Cast net is very hard on a stressed, adult male guarding a nest.
Keep in mind on females that just because they have eggs doesn't mean they are going to lay them. At young age, LMB are similar to walleye in that they may go 2 years with eggs-and reabsorb them, then next year they may actually lay eggs. Stress, water conditions, population structure etc, all will play a role in whether those eggs mature or not, but for the purpose of female only stocking, it doesn't matter if they lay-which the may blow them or reabsorb but no production occurs because (hopefully) no males give them a spot-or lead them in to spawn anyway.
Different ways of looking at all of this.. Point is, if eggs are confirmed, it's 100%, but still another side to how they are selected and another story about what can be done with the unconfirmed fish.
Collecting for reproduction and collecting for trophy potential is 2 completely different goals.
Keep in mind also, males will grow to 6-6.5lbs at the same rate a female grows under specific conditions.

Scott, beings this entire process is performed in the hatchery, they have several things on their side that you and I don't.
#1, and the biggest deal-Someone else is paying the bill.
#2, the number of raceways allow them to spawn Koi on spawntex mats that are quickly removed and placed in hatch raceways-both indoors and out, so there is a constant supply of correct forage size year around.
To make this worth-while for us it would take 3,000 fish to 8-10" to get 1500 females providing no losses so a guess is start with 4000-5000.
My figures would be a return of 20-25$ a fish after overhead on the females and 5-7$ on the males at the 10" mark.
I think 45-50$ a fish retail would work "IF" the demand will handle production and sales of 1500 fish sold per season. Problem I see is unlike some species, this WILL increase labor with an increase in number due to the amount of time consumed per fish so it may drive the price higher just due to time involved.
I seen a note above about chemical alteration of sex of fish.. as Colorado is finding out, there are side effects to this that appear long after raising and stocking...some WAE are being found now that are Hermaphrodites and LMB are not any different in how this change occurs so I would never trust it, but they were sure this was a done-deal.. That's what mother nature does when we alter what shouldn't have been.
Snipe:

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?
If I were asked for 100 Females and that's all I was asked to raise, it would be 100$ a fish minimum