With the recent frigid temperatures, and knowing the susceptibility of tilapia to cold temperatures this afternoon Wayne Tiller and I toured Lake 3 by boat to look for dead tilapia. Wayne had reported he walked around the lake two weeks ago and counted 8 fish floating. That was before this recent cold temps, so we expected to see a large number of dead fish. Lake 3 is the most shallow of all the lakes, it also was stocked with more tilapia than others. We picked up only 5 fish. They were large tilapia, two would weigh 3 to 4 lbs. Of course animals could have consumed some of the dead fish while they were near death or they could be submerged and not visible.
I hope that some have developed survival techniques and suspect that the two larger fish did survive last year, for it is not likely that they could grow to that size in 7 months. We will monitor closely this Spring before stocking, to see if any tilapia survived this winter.
Jerry Jones
