Hi guys,
First I want to offer my congrats on a great site (lots of good discussion going on). Here are some responses to questions and comments raised in this thread. Cecil, thanks for sharing my original letter, the more people that know about saugeye the better. Re Bill Cody's question about early spawning perch: We have done and continue to do early and late out-of-season spawning of perch. The problem we face for spawning too early is that when the fry are hatched our ponds are still iced over so we have nowhere to go with them. I have tried intensive (in-tank) fry culture of perch without being successful enough to apply it on a commercial scale. I realize that some producers are reporting success but for me a 15% return on training the fry (and the associated labor involved) just doesn't compare with the kind of numbers that I get from pond culture of the fry.
Re several comments about production: The current bottleneck is the availability of sauger broodstock. Not many hatcheries produce sauger and with good reason. They are one of the most cannibalistic critters you have ever seen. Although since you are only producing enough broodstock to supply semen, this problem will be easy to overcome (one sauger male can fertilize thousands, no make that millions of walleye eggs to produce the hybrids). Re Dave Willis' comments: Dave you are right on target about the fertility of the hybrids (as good as either parent) and about the performance of the f2 generation. The hybrid vigour (read exceptional growth)expressed in the first generation hybrid seems to peter-out in subsequent crosses, and of course the impact of a fast growing exotic on naturally reproducing populations can be a disaster. The hybrid should only be stocked in isolated waters that do not have reproducing populations of the parental stocks. This being said the Wisconsin River has sauger, walleye and naturally occurring hybrids and although no genetic studies have been conducted it would seem that all three are doing okay. We did use the Otohime diet for taining with good success. This leads to one of the real considerations for hybrids in RAS. Since we can successfully train the hybrid (and walleye) fry, there is no need for a pond phase of fry production. The hybrids can be kept indoors for their entire lives.
