Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Alternative forage ideas for Trophy LMB

Same here. I am buying some property that has a 1/8th acre pond on it right now. I was told it was stocked, and just got out there to really look at it a few days ago. I saw a bunch of small bluegill/perch around the edge, and saw 2 LMB's that were probably a good 16", maybe even a tad bigger. The sun was starting to set, so I wasn't able to see anything else, but I did start hearing lots of frogs. I also heard and then saw a huge splash across from where I was, that I have a hard time believing was anything smaller than the couple of LMB's I saw. I'm wondering how big a LMB could realistically get in such a small pond.

Image of my pond: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J8P5fg1wWyOovbYPMnEScQaQon5mj3xp/view?usp=sharing

I think you could grow a couple of DD lmb in a small pond but you would be limited in any numbers of them.

Now as far as alternative forage for lmb I like the idea of having fresh water prawns and have asked to be in Bob Lusk's prawn order this coming spring.

Bran that looks like a great little pond. Growing nice bluegill should probably be your focus, unless youve a buddy with an excavator who can help you make it bigger on the cheap

Thanks! I was actually surprised to see any LMB's in there at all, as I thought the previous owner was just pulling my leg about that. The neighbor even told me he caught a 4-5 pounder out of it one time when he came over and fished it. I am either going to expand this one to about a 2 acre size, or keep it as in and put a 2 acre pond at the other side of the property (depends on what the watershed study and soil composition says will be best). If I go with the latter, I do want to expand the size of this one, maybe double it to about 1/4 acre. I will be buying a tractor with a backhoe attachment, so I may play around with that later on, if I get bored. After that, I may turn it into the catfish pond, while the larger one becomes the bluegill/LMB pond.

Sounds like a good plan.
Yea you can ahve some LMB in their, and need top or your bluegill will get stunted, you just wont have a lot.

if you fish it pull out any baby LMB you find. Plenty of smarter people can give you more specific instructions. no reason not to have a handful of trophy LMB and a ton of good sized bluegill. Could raise forage here for your other pond too

Scuds & Tilapia.
I just bought some Scuds (arthropods) from a fellow aquarist online. He raises them to feed large aquariums fish.
I read that when introduced to lakes they make up more that 50% of what rainbow trout consume.
Scuds will increase growth all the way up the food chain.


I am breeding Mozambique Tilapia in a few aquariums. I plan to release them in my pond this Spring when water temp is above 65 degrees.
The tilapia multiple like craze, around 700 per batch. The tilapia will clean up most of the plant life in the pond. They also clean up the bottom and can even deepen your pond slightly.
I currently have 100 small fry in a tank. I just bought two 20 gallon aquariums from Petco for $20 each (They are on sale now)
I hope to release from 500 to 1000 in the pond. They will die out next winter, so this is just a maintenance thing.
What this does is takes you plant life and converts it to bass and catfish meat. It also cleans up your pond.

Great pics. Please keep us posted on results!

FYI -- This is the link to the list of food items of tilapia Moss. from FishBase. Note that it does list some bony fishes including gams. and fish eggs and larvae. Mostly it lists inverts., plankton , etc. The list for blue tilapia also lists a bony fish but again mostly plant and zooplankton.



https://www.fishbase.de/TrophicEco/...enus=Oreochromis&species=mossambicus

Tilapia will eat fathead minnows if there is little else available. This I know from sad experience...

I would think anything that below a relative size (don't know that length) is on the menu in addition to algea, plants, and detritus. Amazing creatures indeed. Of interest ... Swingle found that the Moz. Tilapia was more vulnerable to hook and line methods than other tilapia he studied. Can't remember the relative amounts but I do remember that more than 500 lbs/acre was harvest by hook and line in one test. This tendency toward invertebrates and as you witnessed even fish probably has something to do with their (Moz Tilapia) hook and line vulnerability.

A diet that includes inverts and small fish would mean that to some extent they overlap the BG's niche. This in part may be why BG seem to benefit from their presence. By benefit, I mean, tend to not be so overpopulated.

Eric, the link appears to be broken.


Thanks - will fix.

I do not have flathead minnows. maybe I should stock it with some after the tilapia die off.
I am thinking more and more that I will have to supplement with food.

When i had high numbers of Moz Tp they were easy to catch on rod and reel or fly rod using a beaded head fly. I agree with Frank, they will feed on minnows like fingerling lmb fhm's etc. If one adds Moz Tp to your pond before your lmb are large enough to eat 3 or 4" Tp the pond can be overtaken by the Tp numbers. That was my experience.

This agrees with Swingle's findings also. He failed miserably to raise fingerling bass with them. Moz TP grow too fast to be vulnerable to fingerling LMB. Like similar sized BG they are competition to fingerling LMB also eating food that would otherwise grow the fingerlings.

Eric, if you haven't read this paper, I think you will enjoy this read as it pertains to similar ideas you have/are explored with plasticity in bluegill populations. This study found that Moz. Tilapia readily eat fish and that they are digested in less than an hour. They mention that 16% of field collections had fish in their stomachs. To put this in perspective, this means that 16% of the field collected fish had eaten fish within the hour prior to capture!!!

Hey guys!

All of you are talking about Tilapia in ponds that freeze... Does anyone have good reading on Tilapia in ponds that don't freeze? Specifically Blue Tilapia.

Do you mean ponds that get cold enough to kill off the tilapia or do you mean freeze - much different for tilapia conversation ?
In ponds that do not get cold enough to cause mortality to Tilapia you can end up with a large % of your bio-mass in tilapia even to the point that large ones are not susceptible to LMB predation. That is not saying it can't be managed - it can , it just requires a different approach than ponds that have tilapia cold die-off.

nice find jspdad - very interesting.

Ewest- Yes, I am looking for reading matierial on Blue Tilapia in Florida ponds where they dont die in the winter. Need to get my pond pointed in the right direction and figuring out what to do with these tilapia is high on the list

A cast net might work on removing some of them and as far as what to do with them? I would eat em, they are pretty good eating.

Article in Pond Boss soon on the paper noted by jpsdad. Thanks and good find.

http://www.nativefishlab.net/library/internalpdf/21503.pdf

Hey cool. I knew you would find it interesting ... glad you liked it and found inspiration for the magazine from it.