Tilapia

[PeteC]

Mike ,where in Texas are you going to be? The grass,"hydrilla", is growing over pretty bad,but fish can still be taken.We try to go a couple of times a month.Let me hear.
Tracy,I have not tried flint heads,but have used steel trades on long cane shafts.The flint would work ,no doubt. God Bless

[broken arrow]

         Very interesting hunting and a great catch . Here on Vancouver Island the Tilapia is farmed on land in large concrete shallow  pens in fields and sold to stores including Superstore .  I have only seen the pens from a distance but they look about 5 feet deep . The Tilapia you show in your pictures are larger than the farmed ones . I have never eaten the fish .

        Here on the Island I cannot hunt fish, with bow and arrow.    We are not allowed to shoot at any of the fish species .   I wish we were allowed to hunt like you . I took 12 mature silver chum salmon last year spincasting a small trout hook that I lead wrap and a body using a glue gun and my wifes finger nail polish .  I have been fishing this river for 30 years and have perfected the GlueGun Fly and a technique .
        Do you need a licence to hunt like this?

                                                     Winston .

[jeff halfrack]

  O.K.  B A   the  fly  you  talked  about,,,,  you  now  need to  show  us  more  about  them  !!!  maybe  a  build  along?   thanks  jw

[PeteC]

Winston,we can only bowfish for non-game fish.The tilapia is an introduced specie gone rampant,but sure is good eatin'.You do need a license to hunt ,except in Texas state parks ,where you don't have to have a license.Pretty good deal huh? My wife and I met a family from V.I. last summer at the Grand Canyon,and they hiked some with us.They were nice folks. God Bless

[JW_Halverson]

Of course those Texas tilapia taste great, even a Texican knows not to feed their fish on chicken poop.   

And naturally those fish are bigger than the ones on Vancouver Island, after all everything's bigger in Texas, right?   

As for fishing for them, try to get them on the spawning beds.  The males dig fairly large diameter bowls out of the lakebottons in the shallows and they defend it against any intruders.  They "hit and spit" , so be sure to use smaller hooks on the lures than they normally come with.  Perch pattern Rapala in the shorter lengths work pretty good.  If you want to take time to paint the lure to look like a tilapia, you will do better, just be sure to add red under the gullet and chin area to show breeding colors (unless those aren't Tilapia nilotica, not sure about the other species).

[broken arrow]

 

      When the Tilapia get into a river system what happens to the fish that are native to that system.  Our river system is healthy  ,  Spring or King , Coho , Pink , Chum , occasional Sockeye ,  some steelhead and Native Cutthroat trout . What might theTilapia do to a river system if there was an escapement from a farm that raises the Tilapia ?

[PeteC]

You are correct on all counts JW, ,I have not researched which specie this is.All I've heard is its common name,"Blue Tilapia".We also have" Common Tilapia" as well,in other lakes in our area.
Winston,tilapia cannot survive in cold water.They only live in our coal fired power plant lakes in this area.They do live futher south and can survive if it does'nt get too cold.The fellas from the florida area have them in many waterways.The lakes where I hunt these fish also have  very healthy game and bait fish populations. God Bless

[JW_Halverson]

At about 72 degrees F they stop feeding, much below that and they become torporous, below 50 degrees they drown because their bodies stop functioning.  Not many places in the continental U.S that can support escaped (or released by the Florida DNR in the 1950's to control weeds in the canal systems) tilapia. 

Oddly enough there is a healthy tilapia population here in western South Dakota.  There is a wild-flowing geothermal well near the town of Phillip, the water comes outa the ground at 172 degrees and has enough minerals dissolved in it to float gravel on the surface.  It flows into a large cooling pond and then overflows into Lake Waggoner.  There are catchable populations in the cooling pond as well as in the inflow area on the lake.  When I moved there to set up the hatchery system I was quite taken back by the state Game and Fish people, they didn't require any filtration system on the waste water from the hatchery nor did they care if any of these tilapia escaped.  The way they explained it to me was that they would welcome another baitfish base for the bass to feed on in Lake Waggoner.  I asked what they would do if the tilapia overpopulated the lake and they laughed, said they would divert the water from flowing into the lake for a week in December and end the problem.  Next time I'm down there I'll have to take the bow. 

Good fishing, Pete.

[Tsalagi]

Wow, I find myself envious. I love tilapia.

[sticknstring]

hey Pete, I bet yours taste better than mine.

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[stickbender]

      Wow!   Those are nice ones.  We have them like that down here also.  When I was a little kid, in the all Florida Magazine, it showed divers in the Kissimee river getting Aligator Gars like that.  They get quite large.  Have you taken any scales off of them?
They look just like arrow heads, and are extremely hard!  In fact, I was once told that the Indians used them just for that purpose.
You have quite a lot of Gar steaks there.

                                                                      Wayne

[hawkbow]

Pete I am working all over Texas near Corpus right now went hunting gar with Sky arrow last week near Port Lavaca got my first with a longbow

[mullet]

 Where I live in Lakeland, Florida we have Tilapia everywhere there is water. We can cast net them, snatch them, trap them and gig and bow shoot them. It is still common to get some in the five pound range.

 I've never seen them floating till the temperature gets down in the low 30's or upper 20's. Then you can walk or wade and dip net them. They will be swimming on the surface, very lethargic.
You can catch them on a hook like you do mullet by chumming with chicken scratch feed and then use a small brim hook with a small piece of live worm or plastic rubber worm .

[sticknstring]

We have gotten the gar scales and dried them.  They are hard and very sharp, but not too wide maybe 1" .  They make great necklaces and stuff.
I haven't put one on the end of an arrow yet. 

[chasing crow]

Man you folks sure seem to have a good time! Life is good!