Mozambique is what Tyler fish farms said they were when purchased in march.
I started with 10# of stock, the largest of which was maybe slightly smaller than hand sized, most smaller than a pack of cigarettes. 1/2 acre pond, about 10' at center.
(Currently 3 feet low because it stopped raining for the most part in this part of Texas in august).
I have seen at least 5 generations this summer, ranging from bigger than I caught to schools of tiny ones.
They move entirely different and in schools, rapidly changing directions like bait fish if startled. so easy to tell apart from small to large even at a distance.
I would say live bait was the key, they definitely like things with legs. The first time I fished it at the end of this season, I came with white cheddar, which the green lepomis hybrids love and eat like candy. (we called these bream growing up, so forgive me if this is incorrect.) After catching about 20 of them while watching those monster tilapia swim by, I tried night crawlers the next day with no success either (at least with tilapia, the bream eat about anything I throw in). Since the tilapia will top feed pellets, and *will* take a grasshopper tossed on the water, I went scrounging for crickets and grasshoppers, first thing I found, I kid you not was a black widow, and it landed the first tilapia jst about before the bobber hit the water. Was not expecting that for sure! So I then tried some black crickets that live around there, to no avail the first time (bream eat those too....)
Next trip out while scrounging for bugs, found daddy long legs, and thought, WTH, lets see, and boom, that was the next one.
Since then I have landed four on the black crickets, but today all I could find was some grubs.
After feeding most of them to what I am now calling piranhas vs bream because they will just about take a shiny hook without bait...
I said "one more time" with the last grub, and then that beauty above came home with me. 1.78#!
Man that was a fun fish to catch and eat.
So now, I have caught them on:
Black widow/Daddy Longlegs
Black Cricket's
Grubs
I believe I will try some brown crickets from bait store this weekend and see how they do.
Or see if I can drag out some hellgrammites and or mayfly nymphs as they seem proliferate in the grasses as well.
Hardest thing is keeping the hook in the water before a bream snatches it!
I took a little time to check out the digestive track of this one as I filleted it, it was certainly green through and through, they seem to have a rather long digestive tract, and from stomach to exit it was full of what I first assumed to be FA, but now think is sago pondweed? (Green horsehair looking stuff, dries fibrous, and even sprouts above water on mats or on land at edges when the water recedes...)
Which BTW, they absolutely destroyed this season, i am a way ahead of where I thought I would be in cleaning.
So they are definitely eating vegetation as a primary food source, but seem to be opportunistic, and seem to favor things with legs :-)
I have supplemented some protein, but first bag was 40# second was 50# and I still have half of it left.
Very very much worth $120 in march!
| 
