Sometimes tilapia(TP) for VARIOUS reasons are not a good 50:50 sex mix that you buy from fish farm sellers. Sellers sometimes buy the cheapest and or largest TP for resale. This can often be food market male fish. It is part of the customer's responsibility to ask about fish sex ratio and or be knowledgeable about what they are buying. Buyer Beware.
So in this specific case it is very possible ‘some’ of the TP purchased in Ohio for 2022 were mostly male and few offspring were produced. Those few numbers of offspring produced by mostly male TP were very likely all eaten by bass by the time the water cooled and their swimming ability significantly decreased. Tilapia in near death temperature water are barely able to swim and are very easy meals for anything that can capture them. I have see several fish in the late fall choke to death trying to eat too large of tilapia.
Some TP sold in OH this year, depending on the grower, had a higher percentage of pearl or cream colored TP. I found some of these pearl TP died at a higher temperature than those with a high percentage of pure blue tilapia genetics. IMO the pearl TP are colorful, customer popular, and very easy to see in the pond. IMO most all ‘blue’ tilapia in the US are now some degree of hybrid blue TP.
Today Nov 15 I looked and I still have some TP alive in a cage; one of them is a pearl TP with about 10 blue TP and a few YP. YSI meter water temperature reading was 48.5F.
Catching tilapia. This is my best method to catch them. TP are raised and grown on fish pellets.
1. I think when the goal is to catch your TP at year’s end, one should regularly feed TP a small amount of pellets daily or at least a few times a week. Condition them to your presence and you regularly adding a little welfare food. TP are shy hesitant fish by nature.
2. Feed the TP in the beach or shallow area of the pond or where you see them building spawning nests. TP are spawning throughout the summer. For most of the summer in smaller ponds, this is where most of the TP are most often congregated – at the ‘sex party in the beach'.
3. For best angler success plan the harvest at or before the water temperature drops below 70F. Why? At below 70F TP quit spawning. Below 70F, they scatter throughout the pond and then you have to figure out where you will encounter most of them and for where to fish to catch them quickest and easiest. Below 70F the pellet feeding area ‘could’ still be a good place and time to fish. Also below 70F water is cooler,,,TP are not as hungry, and they feed less. Thus IMO they are not as aggressive and somewhat harder to catch below 70F water temp. NOTE - When the water drops below 70F,,, TP by then should have all the problem of filamentous algae(FA) consumed. In my pond, abundant TP also have eaten most or all Chara and other delicate, soft textured, submerged vegetation by year’s end. If not, you did not initially stock enough TP. For other plant consumption, you can also have one or a few grass carp to help eat submerged vegetation. As you remove TP from water at or near 70F there should still be lots of TP offspring available to eat the short regrowths of FA before the temperature of 50F water.
4. Best baits for catching TP have been found to be pieces of night crawler, small cubes of hot dog and artificial fish pellets (example Stubby Steve’s fish lures) that are fished 12” to 3 ft under a bobber. I and angler guests have very good success using soften rolled fish pellets as TP bait. TP become hook shy quickly after several are caught. 30 TP were caught on Labor day and 20 the next week end. When hooked they probably release a pheromone or similar chemical that other TP detect as a ‘fight or flight’ substance. As angler success significantly decreases it usually takes several days to a week for catching success to improve. As water cools angler success noticeably decreases.
Enough for today. I have to go clean some caged tilapia.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 11/16/22 10:48 AM.
