Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Any experience with Tilapia in your fishing hole

I'm tired of fighting vegetation in my fishing pond. I fight it with chemicals for 20 years and it is a losing battle. Tilapia has been recommended. Anybody have experience with them?

Not here. Good luck.

No, but sounds like they can tolerate some rough water conditions.

They are good to eat.

Butch,

They have started using them here north of you but they don’t last the winter so they have to restock each year.

But they are getting good results with them.

I was told they won't make the winter and are good forage for my Florida bass. Price and trouble would be less than what I'm fighting right now.

bunch in lake falcon.

What about sterile grass carp? I think that is what people around here use.

I have been stocking Tilapia in my two ponds every year for over 10 years. (The hardiest species, Blue Tilapia, die when the water temp gets down to 45-50 degrees, hence the annual restocking.) They are excellent at eating filamentous algae (aka pond scum), but will not eat leafy/stalky plants like arrowhead or floating leaf pond weed. If present in high numbers, they will eat fish food.

I find them to have little taste or texture compared to what I consider "good eating" fish (bluegill, walleye, etc.) But at least I know the ones from my ponds didn't live in Chinese sewage like a lot of imported Tilapia

The ghetto of farmed fish. They can live in any putrid puddle. In 1983, a science teacher figured someday there'd be farm raised tilapia in the stores.... Something called aquaculture. Crazy.

You'd be surprised at the conditions many fish can live in, trout included. Granted, they're not as tolerant as certain tilapia and carp, but they can live (maybe not thrive) in some pretty "crappy" conditions.

Geno

Farmed raised Talapia ain’t bad Boomer...But, I also say the same about pen raised stocker trout. I have a hobos Palate. 😎

Yeah, Lake Braunig on the southeast side of San Antonio used to be full of em. I thought the San Antonio river was too.

That’s what tilapia are, aka grass carp. A school I managed twenty years ago had them for the aquaculture program. Over the summer they were put out in ponds. Come September they were brought back in, always a lot of new, young ones. Somehow the “sterile “ tilapia reproduced

There’s a bunch of them in the San Antonio river. I’ve saw them caught off the river walk and your temps aren’t much different than here so I would imagine they would make it through the winter

Talapia is what the Nigerians are bitching about that the Chinkeye brought in inferior quality Talapia than their home raised chit fish. Part of the Belt and Road progress from our creditors...

Go find Dutch on here, he's the fish guy.

Respectfully disagree.

The best of them can be flavored to be sorta edible. The others? Well.....

We dont eat the filthy muddafuggas!