Fisheries Management

Stocking your lake or pond with the appropriate fish can be beneficial to your waterbody in a variety of ways. Whether you’re looking to control algae blooms, enhance your forage base, improve recreational fishing or simply grow an excellent food source, tilapia may be the ideal fish for your lake or pond. Tilapia are tropical fish that can provide numerous benefits to a waterbody if stocked correctly. These fish are more than a delicious entrée, they are a species that can bring balance to your ecosystem and improve your fishery.

Tilapia can be an excellent supplemental forage fish depending on the species. Some tilapia have a very high reproductive rate and do not grow very large, which makes them great for forage, while other species that produce fewer offspring and grow larger in size are typically utilized for consumption. Tilapia can be stocked to the forage base of your lake or pond without negatively impacting the productivity of other forage species such as bluegill and threadfin shad. As a warm water fish, tilapia begin to slow down and become sluggish in the colder months where they turn into easy forage for bigger fish such as Largemouth Bass.

Not only do tilapia enhance the forage base of a fishery, but they also improve the health of your waterbody by feeding on excess vegetation. Some tilapia species, such as Blue Tilapia, feed entirely on algae (both planktonic and filamentous) but do not readily consume submerged vascular plants. On the other hand, Redbelly Tilapia primarily feed on submerged vegetation rather than algae. Though tilapia cannot consume all the algae in a pond, their presence can certainly improve a waterbody’s health.