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

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
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I’ve tried it... I think the only thing that would make them palatable is to chop’em up, press into heavily seasoned fish cakes, batter dip and deep fry.

So you are telling me I've eaten carp? Don't know that I would have done that if I had known.

No wonder the girl who fixed it for us put a bunch of cheese and all manner of seasonings on it!

Tilapia are not grass carp! They are cichlids.

Grass carp are called "White Amur", look like a carp, and get pretty large. Talapia are more like a pan fish than a carp.

i haven't eaten fresh water fish in probably 30 yrs, the salt has much better tasting fish. take that back did get some catfish from Barry's pond last yr, but the saltwater fish are better overall.

Grass carp is a fish of the minnow family (Cyprinidae)

Tilapia is a member of the cichlid family. A family of tropical and subtropical fishes. One of the most commonly recognized species being the common fresh water angel fish often seen in aquaria.

My Son in Law put tilapia in the pond beside my house last summer and we watched them spawn and brood their clutch. But we have seen none since the ice melted off the pond. I doubt they survived the winter. But the small mouth are fat and healthy.

I actually very much enjoy the flavor and texture of tilapia, and find it similar to bass. But nothing compares to the flavor of fresh caught and pan fried blue gill.

We have a native cichlid here. The Rio Grande Perch. I’m sure they are endangered now. But they were sure good eating back in the day and fun on a fly rod.

Not endangered at all. Known as "Texas Cichlid" in the aquarium trade, the fish is widely available to the hobbyist. It is the only Cichlid indigenous to USA, and is more tolerant of cooler water than most members of the family.

Florida has a huge problem today with invasive species of cichlids which have been introduced to its waterways.

You rang?

Ok, tilapia in ponds.

Plus: they are cheap. They make GREAT bass forage. Once mature (six inches or less, 4 months old or so), they will reproduce like mad, if circumstances are good. Like 1,500 every 25 days or so. They will winter kill in most of Texas, which is actually a good thing. You never have to worry about overcrowding your ponds with forage fish -- they just disappear every winter. A lot of the bass clubs are using tilapia -- also for the extra benefit of vegetation control. But mostly because they make an excellent, EXCELLENT bass forage. Until about a decade ago, I used to send a couple of truckloads of tilapia to Texas every Spring for pond management purposes. FWIW, most commercial tilapia are raised in monosex male populations, if you buy them for ponds make darn sure they are natural, mixed sex populations, or you're pee'n in the wind...

The holy grail is to combine the tilapia with White Amur ( grass carp). Do pony up for the sterile carp, or you'll have sixteen gazillion of them at some point. Both tilapia and White Amur are fine table fare, with the carp being the better of the two. The carp will winter, I have had some that were 20 years old and big enough to put a saddle on...

Anyway, the grass carp target the macrophytes, the larger rooted and "hard" plants. The tilapia will eat, well, everything else. They aren't quite filter feeders, but they will forage on very, very small plants. They need some higher quality protein to thrive (and bugs and assorted other animal protein sources, including higher order algae will do the job). They will keep things clean.

Lower lethal temperature for Nile Tilapia is about 13C for any duration, so once water temps get into the 40's you can start making plans to restock.

Yep. Those suckers are delish after frying in cornmeal.

Dutch, last spring our pond (ground water fed, no outlet, so no actual flow through) got infested with something which was biting the crap out of the kids when they went swimming. It left tiny, tiny welts which actually was more of a rash.

The kids have been swimming in the pond since it was dug three years ago. There were no problems previously. And after that first trial in the early spring, no one was brave enough to get in the water again last summer.

Will the Tilapia eat an organism like that, and get rid of it?

Yes, I know. That is not much information to go on.

I used to stock a guy's back yard pond with trout for just that reason, it kept the whatever the bitey bug was down so the kids could swim.

Not much information to go on, but I would bet just about any fish would do the job. If you can get a hold of Cunningham at Opaline Farms, he should be able to line you up with something like some bluegill that would do the job. I can get you set up with some tilapia, but you'll have to wait till June, and like I said, they don't do cool water, so if you have spring flow of any significant amount, they won't make it. Figure on minimum water temps of 70 degrees or better. Blue gill, catfish, small mouth, large mouth might all be better choices. But, it's been done with some success for years (all the way back to when we used Zillii).

The kids dropped about 1/2 dozen blue gill, and 1/2 dozen sunfish in there last summer. But I have not seen any evidence they are still there. It is a fairly small pond. Maybe 1/8-1/6 acre. SIL also planted about 100 crawdads and 100 baby cats. Not sure which variety.

They are catching smallmouths about 10 to 11 inches the last couple weeks on Mepps spinners. (all stuck at home bored)

17 year old grand daughter, used to driving to school and playing sports, and hanging with her friends and boyfriend, has been shelter in place for three weeks, so she is sitting at the side of the pond with rod and reel almost every day. PaPa's early fishing lesson's must have stuck.

So anyway, I will encourage him to stock another 100 of the tilapia. Maybe some will survive the bass long enough to spawn.

We should see evidence of the bass spawning soon.

Good friend raises black bass for the Chicago fish market and he stocks his "grow out" ponds with them every year.

There was a lake not too far from here that stocked grass carp for hydrilla control and I heard that they apparently did not take into account that the things would grow and grow. They got way more weed control than they planned for and the fish were reportedly pushing right up to the bank to eat lawn clippings. Last I heard they were trying to gill net them out of the lake. This is all hearsay, I don't know for sure. But if you can get some sterile ones they might be what you need.

I have eaten Tilapia fresh caught from Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe and they were quite tasty. I used to always try to fish for them if time was available, that and tiger fish, lots of fun.

I have to apologize, several posts back I mistakenly said tilapia and grass carp are the same thing. I was nicely corrected. They are not. I hope my inaccurate statement didn't cause anyone financial, social or emotional distress.

Idaho, is it possible that you have waterfowl on your pond? There's something called "swimmers itch" that are parasites that live in waterfowl. Check out mayoclinic.org for more info. It can be quite common in some lakes in Manitoba where we live.

Oh yes, There are two hens and a drake mallard swimming around out there right now. I would expect to see the hens raise clutches of babies soon. But the bass might get most of the babies.

I will look for the information you suggested.

When I was a kid we put 4 sterile grass carp in one of our ponds that was overgrown with hydrilla. They cleaned it up and lived for probably 15 years until the pond went dry. They were kinda neat, always swam in a school you’d never see just one. And by the end they were probably close to 40” long.

I don’t know about eating tilapia, I’ve read that their natural food source is hippo schit, not my kind of eating fish. Never ate one since I don’t buy fish and there aren’t any around so I could be wrong. I’m just thinking that every pond I fish is a place where cattle water so I know what they’ll be eating.