I realize I'm still a few months away from tilapia dieoff here in Central Ohio. But in an effort to plan ahead, I plan to harvest and fillet the tilapia before the water gets too cold and kills them. Plan is to do a catch and cook fish fry with some friends.

Anyone have tried and consistent ways of catching tilapia? I don't honestly care if it's by hook and line or some other method, though hook and line is more fun. Does anyone have a traditional fishing method for catching for the kids that might not be able to handle a flyrod?

I've only been successful in regularly catching tilapia with a fly rod and a small yarn fly made to look like a piece of floating feed which the tilapia are more than happy to pig down.

bcraley, I'll be interested to see what you find out, I'm looking for the same info. This is my first year with tilapia. When/How early do you start fishing them out?

bcraley, sounds to me like hours of fun for you and the kids.

The kids who can operate a spinning or spin cast outfit could fish with one of those yarn flies behind one of those clear plastic casting bubbles made just for this situation. You can partially fill the bubble with water to add weight for casting.

Another bait/lure that I believe works is a stubby steves. There are threads on the forum about using them.

Please post pics of your outings.

A casting net will work for harvesting some Tp. It has worked for me. And the years I have good numbers of Tp I catch them using a fly rod and a beaded head fly.

This is also my first year with tilapia. But I'm planning to fish and harvest mid to late September, while they are still fairly active and willing to eat. Might as well have some fun with it, right?

I've been experimenting with different ways of catching tilapia so that next month I have it figured out when we do our catch and cook party.

Good Idea To Try - I took a cork from a wine bottle and cut a piece about the size of a piece of feed. Put it on a small egg hook and then tied to my fly rod. BOOM! Caught three tilapia in less than 5 minutes. So far best thing I've found. Some of these guys are getting really big. And their offspring based on the one smaller one that I caught are the size of a medium size BG.

Get some Stubby Steve's pellet lures - you'll never want to make your own simulated pellet baits again.

I use the George Glazener method - chum with a little fish food and put a Stubby Steve's a few inches down under a bobber (I have had the best results with bait holders and circle hooks). The biggest fish always seem to want the food pellets that are starting to sink - whammo.

Theo, how would you keep the BG, LMB, and HSB from hitting the Stubby Steve before tilapia?

No way I know of.

And I'd hate to have all those fish biting while I had a line in the water.

Ha! Just thinking about how many CNBG I'd have to catch for every tilapia. Right now I'd estimate that tilapia make up maybe one or two percent of the feeder fish. But I'd love to catch the larger TP before the die off, they taste much better than some people think.

Unless they come from China

True. I try to be careful about buying seafood. Some are transshipped from China through Malaysia or Vietnam to hide their true origins.

I try not to buy anything from China anymore.

I have had good success in early Fall snagging them when they are at the surface soaking up the suns rays.

bcraley, have you harvested your Tilapia yet? I spent 6 hours this past Saturday with no luck... I caught plenty of BG but my Tilapia seem to be very skiddish. Was curious if anyone else has experienced this or if I'm doing something wrong.