Thread: Tilapia as a stocked bait fish for large watersheds

I live near a 225 acre neighborhood lake and we have an issue where the lake has about a zillion 9-10 inch crappie, but you'll rarely see one bigger. Found out recently that a lake down the road, (100 acres) stocked tilapia as a bait fish/forage fish. Do you happen to know anything about smaller lakes doing this? What would the pros and cons be?

I'm on the board of directors for the lake in our neighborhood and would be interested in looking into this as we have no shad in our lake, just bluegill and a few brook silver-sides and maybe a shiner here or there. We do electro shocking studies on the lake every 2 years just an FYI.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by BiglerM

I live near a 225 acre neighborhood lake and we have an issue where the lake has about a zillion 9-10 inch crappie, but you'll rarely see one bigger. Found out recently that a lake down the road, (100 acres) stocked tilapia as a bait fish/forage fish. Do you happen to know anything about smaller lakes doing this? What would the pros and cons be?

I'm on the board of directors for the lake in our neighborhood and would be interested in looking into this as we have no shad in our lake, just bluegill and a few brook silver-sides and maybe a shiner here or there. We do electro shocking studies on the lake every 2 years just an FYI.

Thanks!

BiglerM,

First off, I would like to apologize for not replying sooner. It has been a crazy busy 2017 already and I've not had much office time.

Not knowing what your goals are for the lake makes it hard to make management recommendations. Sounds like you would like to see bigger crappie? There's a couple of ways to get bigger fish--reduce density to increase growth rates of the remaining fish or like you appear to be suggesting, increase forage availability. Stocking of tilapia seems to be gaining popularity. I don't have any direct experience with the use of tilapia in Kansas fisheries management nor do I know of any Kansas water bodies that contain tilapia. The reasons I've seen given for adding tilapia is that they show fast growth, increase catch opportunities, reproduce regularly/providing consistent quality forage, and they eat algae and some other problem vegetation. Tilapia die off during winter when water temps reach 42-52F, which regularly occurs in Kansas. This is a good thing to limit the possibility of the introduced fish becoming a problem. There are also downsides. One downside is the recommended stocking rates of fish or lbs per acre is pretty high which equates to a high stocking cost that potentially would have to occur every year to maintain a population. Another downside is while short term benefits may look pretty good with an increase in forage for predator species such as largemouth bass and crappie, once those tilapia die off you theoretically would have more bigger predators that are now left without the abundant food source. Were the gains worth the cost? What will be needed to support the gains after the tilapia winterkill? Stocking tilapia as a silver bullet cure all with no other fisheries management occurring (target species population management) would likely be disappointing. In short, trying to remedy a "stunted" crappie population by throwing food at it wouldn't be your best bet.

Hope this helps...

Craig