Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Female Bass stock for Ky pond

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

Thanks for the update, Snipe!

Those prices were exactly why I was speculating about possible DIY poor-boy versions of trying to accomplish close to the same results.

100 females at $100/fish is a $10,000 project. You could build a grow-out pond, feed the bass, and pick the shooter females for much less than that, and maybe put 5 good ones in the female-only LMB main pond every year or two.

Might not produce state record LMB (like the YP aficionados are doing), but you should be able to make a pretty darn good LMB "trophy" pond if that is your goal.

Great discussion and lots of new information to me in this thread.

I've said this before several times. Adult forage fed positively sexed female LMB at 1 lb are worth $100. My humble opinion. They may be worth more than that.

Lots of money is spent compensating for intra-species competition that would otherwise prevent LMB from attaining trophy size. It would take far less than that (even at $100/LMB) to maintain a ladder in an all female trophy pond. 2 fish/acre year (harvesting any fish caught > 5 years of age) is all that is required (assuming otters don't wipe one out). $200/acre/year for the ladder? That's nothing. People pay $250 for a bag of shiner fry which results are questionable at best. What about forage ponds? What is the investment there? What about the value of time needed to cull competing LMB recruits? How much is a person's time worth and especially if they are unable or unwilling to harvest the sufficient number of LMB?

I guess the point I am making is that provided supply and demand meet ... that cost can be justified as a good value for the consumer. I don't think the lack of supply is a demand problem. It is probably more of supplier issue. The profit/acre is lower than 2" fingerlings which can number 70,000 or more per acre. If a supplier is selling out of those why would he devote any acreage to the other? He would be better served to increase his production of 2" fingerlings. Also, what about sales of supplemental forage fish? Could this valuable product be diminished by all female management? Ultimately, there is no feasible way to provide everyone with female LMB anyways. It would have to be limited to fewer consumers because there are just too many ponds out there to stock them annually with adult sized LMB.

jpsdad - good thoughts about cost, supply, and demand for female LMB. If someone could develop a way to produce triploid LMB similar to grass carp maybe there would be a market for those bass? Has someone already done this and if not why not? New production possibility?

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.

Good stuff for consideration, jpsdad. Interesting how one species (us) can fiddle and fool around with Mother Nature.

jpsdad - Thanks - It was a good summary about LMB triploidy and chromosome alteration of LMB.

Bottom line? It may be possible (though not yet observed for LMB) that some genotypic females develop into phenotypic males under natural conditions.
jpsdad, this is exactly what happened and is happening in Colorado with WAE. They have abandoned the program because of this which leads back to doing it the old fashioned way to get a 100% female only situation. The input to this-if you do it right-is tremendous because you need to pull shooters from at least 3 generations and sex female shooters from the 4th to get the best potential genetic.
I guess where I'm going with this is that is is possible to sex and provide females with intent to have trophy potential but are the customers really getting that potential if the grower sexes the first year class? No.
It's going to take a grower that is willing to work this program for 4-5 years to build the gene pool and then sell stock sexed from there. At that point, your best males and females each need to be held back for reproduction going fwd.
With that said, I'm going to say 100$ a fish is not enough if you really want to supply true trophy potential, and if someone is offering female only for 35$ a fish, I'd run hard and fast.

Bill, 4CP, Snipe ... thank you for the comments.

Snipe, I do think it is important understand how things don't always work out as planned. That said, I do think that a technology like this is a practical solution to an age old problem. The need for a highly skewed to female of the ratio sexes in a trophy pond. Greatly skewing the ratio of sexes at the fry production phase concentrates value and reduces wasted or unwanted male fish. It doesn't eliminate the need for manual sexing if there is no tolerance for uncontrolled recruitment (like in Colorado where they couldn't tolerate any in fisheries where they wanted the WAE to be put and take only).

Even so, I think for many cases an occasional pheno-typical male is acceptable even while completely ignoring or caring about it. It really depends on the frequency with such aberrations occur. For example, if it occurs once in every 200 fry (probably a much higher frequency than what would occur) there is a 1/2 percent chance that any individual would be functionally male. Consider a case in a 3 acre pond where one stocks 25 fry per acre. Chances favor that none of the stocking is male. But even if one is, it wouldn't be the end of world. Recruitment, if any, would still be greatly diminished because of the skewed sex ratio. Growth should be better than stocking 50/acre of mixed sex fry. Considering that one would still cull some of original stocking, the phenotypic male stands a good chance of being selected for cull. The odds favor that it may be very difficult to recruit LMB when the sex ratio is skew to that degree initially. In a GA lake, mistakes at sexing occurred with the initial stocking but the sex ratio was still skew female after 7 years where the fishing remained excellent for trophy LMB (1/10 the fishing effort to catch a >4.5 lb LMB as compared to professional tournament fishermen on the best GA trophy reservoirs). The authors credited this to abundant prey inhibiting recruitment success. I guess what I am saying is that even when male(s) are present in an initial stocking the benefit of the initially skewed sex ratio is evident well into the future.

I see two uses for this technology. The production of 2 in fry where one just takes what he gets understanding that a phenotypic male could be present and the production of forage fed ~12 in genotypic females (for laddering) that are either manually sexed or not depending on whether the consumer can tolerate an occasional phenotypic male. Manual sexed fish, particularly the shooters, are higher value and perhaps these fish should be auctioned?

I would love to see KEO Fish Farm take this on as a supplier of fry particularly. They already produce a fair proportion of the national production of HSB and GC fry. They have lots of expertise there and presently maintain a line of LMB.

Do you have some reference on the procedures or reference document where the studies are being done?
I "think" we are talking about the same process but I believe this is the process that has been abandoned due to unexpected results-long term. Just trying to tie it together, I know our Centrarchid guru at Meade was hot into this and I spoke with him late today about the altering of chromosome channels. He's curious as well if there is new data available.

Dang Guys, I just renovated a whole 2-2.5 acre pond to create an all-female trophy lake. I am an avid LMB/SMB angler in KY/TN who wants to catch a LARGE (edit - Large being over 8lbs) bass from time to time in my back yard. The pond STILL has no predators in it. You can walk on the backs of the BG that surround my dock when they hear footsteps. Creating a grow out pond has my interest. I actually have 2 ponds within 30 yards of my house. I half own the other. Property line goes straight through the middle of the pond. The other is about 3/4 an acre. Its population is stunted bass, and not many - Gizzard Shad, and BG. Thats IT! NO CC, no BIG LMB. All bass are about 1-2lbs.It has a Filamentous and cattail issue, but since my neighbor fishes often and drags fish to take pics, I have ignored that one to care/build the other.

Pond A = 2 acre pond
Pond B = 3/4 acre pond

Would it be of good practice to pull forage from pond A to put into pond B to increase grow out rates?

Could I have pond B be my big BG pond since most bass are only 1-2lbs? Pond B is not pellet fed.

This has been 1 HELLOVA reread/visit. You folks edu-ma-cated 1 country redneck ! lol

FTF, stunted LMB will allow some bigger BG in lower numbers to continue to grow because they can't eat them. Problem is, if you want to use the other pond for forage production I think larger numbers of medium-stunted BG-are better forage than smaller numbers of bigger BG. I think for best trophy potential, I think you'll have to continue stocking every BG you can obtain and therefore I would be removing the stunted LMB from pond #2, maybe even cut the tails off of the 9-10" under fish and make forage out of them also..
If you don't have a back-up forage pond, I believe you are going to be buying medium sized BG by the thousands to keep your big bass growing at the highest rate.